SINGAPORE - Local short-track speed skater Lucas Ng won both his events on the first day of the MapleZ Southeast Asian Short Track Trophy at The Rink at JCube on Saturday (Jan 7).

The 28-year-old clocked 2min 58.199sec in the 1,500m senior men's A final and 46.245s in the 500m senior men's A final.

Malaysia's Wong De-Vin was runner-up in both categories.

Said Ng: "(This competition) is important because we hardly gather athletes around the region to compete with one another, so this will definitely be a benchmark for many skaters who want to compete at the SEA Games.

"We will get to know who our competitors are and who we're racing with, and understand how much harder we have to work to push ourselves to do well at the SEA Games."

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu attended the event's opening ceremony on Saturday morning as guest of honour.

The two-day competition will feature a total of 83 athletes from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, ahead of the Kuala Lumpur SEA Games in August.

This is the third Southeast Asian-level short track competition. Bangkok hosted the first in 2014, while Singapore held last year's Tri-Series SEA Cup, which saw 65 skaters from six countries attend.