Tao Li was the 11th fastest swimmer in the 100m Butterfly heats with a 58.34-second performance. The top 16 swimmers move on to the semi-finals. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images for SSC)

 

London, Saturday, July 28, 2012 — Singapore swimmer Tao Li qualified for the semi-finals of the Women’s 100 metres Butterfly when she clocked a time of 58.34 seconds in the opening session of the swimming competition at the 30th Olympic Games in London.

She was the 11th fastest swimmer and will race in the semi-finals tomorrow morning at 2.40am (Singapore time). The fastest qualifier was United States of America’s Dana Vollmer in 56.25 sec.

This was Tao Li’s fastest time in the event since November 2010 when she won silver at the Asian Games in a time of 58.24 sec, which remains her personal best since non-textile swimsuits were banned in January 2010. Her lifetime best is 57.54 clocked at the semi-finals of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It was a then-Asian record which propelled her to become the first Singaporean swimmer to make an Olympic swimming final. She finished fifth there.

Tao Li’s heats swim here was a marked improvement from her year’s best of 59.14 seconds in March, as well as her 2011 fastest of 58.78 at the World Championships.

15-year-old Quah Zheng Wen finished more than five seconds off his personal best and national open record of four minutes 21.70 seconds in the Men’s 400m Individual Medley. The Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) student finished eighth and last in his heat in a time of 4:26.81, and placed 33rd of 36 swimmers overall.

Zheng Wen was crowned the Sportsboy of the Year at this year’s Singapore Sports Awards, and is also the reigning South-east Asian Games champion in the 400m IM. He is also entered in the 200m Backstroke, where he is the national Open and Under-17 record holder in a time of 2:01.18. Zheng Wen will swim the 200m Backstroke heats on Wednesday, August 1st.

Japan’s Kosuke Hagino was the fastest qualifier in an Asian record of 4:10.01, while two-time defending champion Michael Phelps from the USA squeaked through to the final in eighth place, just seven hundredths of a second ahead of Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh who swam a 4:13.40.