ACS(I)'s Mark Lee (#53) blazed through the A Div boys’ 200m final in a 21.62s (-0.3m/s) record run, shattering the 10-year-old electronically-timed championship and schools national record of 21.75s set by Hwa Chong alumnus Donovan Chan. The 18-year-old athlete also went under Sandy Hong’s hand-timed record of 21.7s set in 1984.
ACS(I) once again retained their stranglehold of all boys' divisional championships with a sixth straight grand slam of A, B and C titles, while RI and MGS retained their A and B girls' titles with the latter also dethroning defending champions and nearest rivals Raffles Girls' School in the girls' C Division.
Nine records were broken on the first of two days of Swimming finals, with RGS' Charla Tan's new record in the B Division Girls' 200m Backstroke being the second-fastest female timing in Singapore this year and also a medal-winning timing across all three Boys' categories.
By a tiny margin of eight-hundredths of a second, Nanyang Girls' High School (NYGH) fell short of breaking the B Division girls' 4 by 100 metres relay championship record. Nonetheless, that failed to dampen their mood as the school continued their dominance in the relay events in recent years, garnering three out of four golds in the girls' B and C divisions.
Singapore Sports School make clean sweep of the C and B Division boys' relay races, while HCI and RI battle it out for gold in the A Division boys' relay finals at the 60th National Schools Track and Field Championships.
In a matter of two days, Elizabeth-Ann Tan of Nanyang Girls' High School wiped out two championship records under National Stadium floodlights, clinching golds in both the 100-metre hurdles and 100m sprint finals. She hurdled to a new B Division benchmark of 14.59 seconds on Thursday, March 28, before tearing down the track a day later in the blue riband event in a swift 12.25s.
Just a few days earlier, the two emerged as champions in their C Division 200-metres finals. The stands at the National Stadium saw a similar show of brilliance as Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)'s Xavier Tan and Singapore Sports School's (SSP) Samantha Ortega found gold yet again at the 60th National Schools Track and Field Championships, this time in the highly anticipated 100m finals.
Raffles Institution (RI)'s Valencia Ho secured her third sprint hurdles title at the annual National Schools Track and Field Championships when she crossed the finish line first in the A Division girls' 100-metre hurdles final, stopping the clock at a personal best 15.25 seconds. It adds to the B Division gold she won in the event last year and her C Division 80m hurdles win in 2015. Between those, the former Nanyang Girls' High School (NYGH) athlete still earned silvers losing to teammate and record-setter Elizabeth-Ann Tan in the C girls' race in 2016, and to Singapore Sports School (SSP) alumna Rachel Chin in the 2017 B Division final.
