Schooling sets national record in backstroke

Nov 17, 2018 10:41 pm

Olympic champion Joseph Schooling set a new national short-course record – in backstroke – during the Singapore leg of the Fina Swimming World Cup at the OCBC Aquatic Centre on Saturday.

The 23-year-old butterfly specialist clocked 24.08sec in the backstroke leg of the mixed 4x50m medley to erase Quah Zheng Wen’s previous national short-course mark of 24.56sec set in 2014.

The Singapore team of Schooling, Roanne Ho, Teong Tzen Wei and Amanda Lim won the silver in 1:42.21, behind Australia’s quartet of Minna Atherton, Matthew Wilson, Emily Seebohm and Kyle Chalmers, who clinched gold in 1:39.69.

Schooling, who had also set another national record of 22.40sec en route to winning a bronze in the 50m butterfly, will return to the US to complete his undergraduate studies with the University of Texas at Austin, before returning to Singapore in February to train for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Meanwhile, Russia's Vladimir Morozov and Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom sealed their placing at the top of their respective divisions of the Fina Swimming World Cup.

Morozov won four events across three days in Singapore – including the 50m fly in 22.17sec on Saturday – and was crowned overall men’s champion, picking up the winner's cheque of US$150,000 (S$206,000). He also bagged another US$50,000 for winning the Asian cluster.

In the women's division, Sjostrom emerged as the overall women's champion, but Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu won the Asian cluster, which included the Beijing and Tokyo legs earlier this month and concluded with the Singapore event.