PETALING JAYA: Youngsters Tern Jian Han and Erika Kong capped a promising debut in the Commonwealth Youth Games by beating the SEA Games qualifying marks on the opening day of swimming competition at the Isle of Man on Friday.
Fifteen-year-old Jian Han, who was only roped into the national swimming team in March, beat the SEA Games qualifying mark of 2:04.36 en route to making it to the men’s 200m backstroke final.
Jian Han clocked a personal best of 2:03.17 to finish eighth fastest in the preliminaries.
The automatic qualifying mark for measurable sports in the SEA Games are based on the silver medal placings from Laos two years ago.
But the Batu Pahat-born swimmer could only clock 2:04.68 to finish eighth in the final.
Erika just missed out on a place in the women’s 100m breaststroke final after clocking the ninth fastest time of 1:12.03.
Still, it was better than the silver medal mark of 1:12.54 from the previous SEA Games.
Despite reaching the SEA Games qualifying standards, Erika may find it hard to claim a spot in the 100m breaststroke as Christina Loh and Siow Yi Ting are the likely entries.
Christina has consistently swam below the 1:12 this year and her best effort so far is 1:10.79 at the national age-group meet in Malacca in March. Yi Ting is the defending champion for the event and the current national record holder at 1:09.82.
Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia (Asum) secretary Edwin Chong said the initial list of swimmers for the SEA Games had been submitted to the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM).
“OCM are supposed to finalise the list before the end of this month. Jian Han has improved a lot since joining the Bukit Jalil programme earlier in the year and he should be going for his first SEA Games.”
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