Bukit Gombak Stadium, Saturday, May 19, 2012 — Shanti Veronica Pereira broke her own national youth record in the 100 metres when she clocked a time of 12.24 seconds at the Singapore Athletic Association (SAA) Track and Field Series 4 meet.

Running in the first heat of the women’s open race, the 15-year-old finished first ahead of Wendy Enn (12.65) and schoolmate Eugenia Tan (12.72) to better her current mark of 12.37 sec set at the SAA Series 1 meet in January this year. Shanti’s run also broke the national under-17 mark of 12.30 sec, set by Balpreet Kaur in 2005. In addition, it was just 0.01 seconds off Balpreet’s four-year-old national junior record of 12.23.

The wind speed for the record-breaking race was -0.1 metres per second. The record is pending ratification by the SAA.

With this performance, Shanti qualified for next month’s Asian Junior Championships in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The qualifying mark is 12.29 sec and was benchmarked by the SAA to the sixth-placed performance at the last Championships in Vietnam two years ago.

Middle-distance runner Zachary Devaraj also qualified for the Championships when he clocked a fast time of 4 minutes 6.18 seconds in the men’s 1500m, bettering the qualifying mark of 4:06.75. It was the second fastest time that the Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) student had ever run, and was just seven hundredths of a second off his personal best recorded in July 2010.

Colombo-bound thrower Wong Kai Yuen was just two centimeters off his own national junior record when he threw a distance of 16.29m in the six-kilogram shot put.