By Erwin Wong

Rome, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - Try as they might, no Singaporean female, particularly Tao Li and Shana Lim, has ever swum the 50m Backstroke below 29.20 seconds. And frustratingly for the latter, it was no different on Day 4 of the World Swimming Championships.

The national and Under-17 record of 29.20s had stood since December 2006, when Tao Li set it at the Doha Asian Games. 16 year old Shana equaled the mark twice this year in March and June, and the record looked ripe for the picking.

Tao Li was the first of the 2 to attempt to break it, and absolutely burst out of her blocks with a reaction time of 0.52s which was tied for 2nd fastest in the entire field of 133. She maintained her lead from start to finish, and touched home in 29.28s, a whisker away from the national record.

It was Shana's turn 3 heats later, and she was swimming alongside veteran and double Olympic silver medallist Martina Moravcova from Slovakia, as well as fellow 16 year old and American rising star Elizabeth Pelton. She was 7th off her blocks and 29.20 uncanny seconds later, Shana once again equaled the national mark.

A national age group mark, though, was broken today. Singapore Sports School student Clement Lim kept up his recent spate of consistent 52+ swims in the 100m Freestyle when he broke his own 26 day old Under 17 record with a 52.11s display in the heats. The previous mark stood at 52.26s set at the Asian Youth Games, and the 16 year old had also swum another 3 times below 52.5 within the past 2 months.

That placed Clement tied with Nicholas Tan for first place in the local 100m Freestyle rankings, but the latter went clear at the top one heat later with a 51.83s performance that was a personal best. Nicholas had to contend with several regional rivals in his heat, and he will meet the same few names at the year-end South East Asian Games in Laos.

Malaysian Daniel Bego clocked a sizzling 50.86s while Filipino Charles Walker and Indonesian Glenn Sutanto finished in 51.92s and 52.54s respectively. Other ASEAN swimmers who featured in this event at the Worlds were Malaysian Foo Jian Beng (51.71s) and Philippines' Kendrick Uy (52.67s).

In the 2 other events in the morning heats, Lynette Lim clocked a personal best of 2:15.82s in the 200m Butterfly. She had set a national record in the 1500m Freestyle 2 days ago. Koh Ting Ting was unable to better her 2:19.23s performance at June's national championships, as she swam a 2:21.31s here.

In the men's 200m Individual Medley, Pang Sheng Jun finished in 2:13.96s, which was more than 6 seconds off his Under-17 record of 2:07.92s set at June's Nationals. The splits were 27.42s (Butterfly), 33.96s (Backstroke), 37.31s (Breaststroke), 29.23s (Freestyle) as compared to today's 28.08s, 35.35s, 39.56s and 30.97s.

The swimming programme at the 13th World Championships reaches its halfway mark, and Team Singapore has already racked up 3 new national records and 1 equaled, and 2 new Under-17 marks and another equaled.

Our swimmers will be featured in the following events tomorrow: Women's 100m Freestyle (Quah Ting Wen, Amanda Lim), Women's 200m Breaststroke (Roanne Ho, Cheryl Lim), Men's 200m Backstroke (Rainer Ng), Men's 200m Breaststroke (Ng Jia Hao, Mark Tan), as well as the women's 4x200m Freestyle relay team.