Christina and Kevin meet Olympics invitational qualifying time

PETALING JAYA: Swimmers Kevin Yeap and Christina Loh, who were first-time gold medallists at the Indonesia SEA Games last year, indicated they are worthy of places in the London Olympics by meeting the qualifying standards at the Singapore national age-group tournament last weekend.

The national swimmers marked their first outing of the year with a medal haul of 11-3-3 in the meet, which is the first designated Olympic qualifier for the region.

But the significant efforts came from Kevin and Christina, who dipped under the Olympic invitational time in the respective boys over 18 and over 1500m freestyle and girls 15-17 100m breaststroke finals.

Kevin clocked a personal best of 15:40.54 to settle for the silver behind India’s Sangvekar Saurabh, who won in 15:34.67. The Olympic invitational time for the longest race in the men’s division is 15:43.74.

Kevin also bagged a gold in the 400m freestyle in 3:55.32, just outside the Olympic invitational time of 3:54.13. The 22-year-old clocked 3:55.07 in winning the SEA Games gold medal in Indonesia last year.

Christina set a new personal best of 1:10.59 in coming in second in the 100mbreaststroke behind Aoki Reona of Japan, who posted a winning time of 1:09.97. Both dipped under the Olympic invitational time of 1:10.89.

Christina’s effort was better than her senior Siow Yi Ting, who won the 18 and over 100m breaststroke in 1:11.46.

Yi Ting led Christina to a 1-2 finish to retain her 100m breaststroke title at the SEA Games last year.

Christina also affirmed her reputation as the fastest in the 50m breaststroke in the region with a new national mark of 32.19 in winning the discipline in her age-group.

The 17-year-old previously set a personal best of 32.29 when she finished 20th in her first World Championships appearance in Shanghai before hitting the big-time with a SEA Games gold medal in Indonesia.

The swimmers will still need to better their Olympic invitational times before the deadline passes in June to secure their spots for London.

National coach Paul Birmingham Thomas said most of the swimmers did quite well considering they were not targeted to hit form at this time of the year.

“We just had a very hard training block in Phuket and the swimmers were tired. No one tapered for this meet as the purpose was for them to have some good race practice, something which we don’t get enough of.”

The next assignments for the swimmers will be the national agegroup meet next month followed by the Malaysian Open in May. Both are Olympic qualifying meets and will take place at the National Aquatic Centre in Bukit Jalil.