S’pore’s Teong Tzen Wei regains 50m fly Asian record, places 4th at World Cup
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Teong Tzen Wei set a short-course Asian record of 21.93sec in the men's 50m butterfly at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup on Oct 25.
PHOTO: ST FILE
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- Teong Tzen Wei set a Asian record of 21.93 in the 50m butterfly final, finishing fourth at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup in Canada.
- Five world records were broken at the same event, including Lani Pallister (7:54.00) in the women's 800m freestyle, Caspar Corbeau (1:59.52) in the men's 200m breaststroke, and Kate Douglass (49.93) in the women's 100m freestyle.
- Teong is now focusing on the upcoming SEA Games in Thailand, aiming to reclaim his 50m butterfly gold title.
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SINGAPORE – On a night when five short-course world records fell on the last day of the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup in Toronto, Singapore’s Teong Tzen Wei also shone with an Asian record in the men’s 50m butterfly final.
Getting off to a good start with the best reaction time of 0.58sec among eight finalists, the 28-year-old finished fourth in 21.93sec behind Canada’s Ilya Kharun (21.80), Swiss Noe Ponti (21.81) and another home favourite Josh Liendo (21.91) on Oct 25.
The previous Asian record of 21.96sec was set by China’s Sun Jiajun in September 2024.
Teong was a previous Asian record holder
He improved his national record to 21.97sec in the next edition in 2024.
After his latest mark at the last of the World Cup’s three stops, Teong has set his sights on the Dec 9-20 SEA Games in Thailand.
He is aiming to regain his long-course men’s 50m butterfly gold he won in a Games-record 23.04sec in Vietnam in 2022 but lost to teammate Mikkel Lee in Cambodia in 2023
Teong said: “It’s an amazing result and I’m happy to get a personal best, national record and Asian record on my last swim.
“My goal was to get better every stop and I did that. Taking part in this World Cup series has helped me fine-tune my swims and race preparation.
“I’m excited to come home to train with the Singapore team in the lead-up to the SEA Games.”
National swimming head coach and performance director Gary Tan said this is a great confidence-booster for Teong.
“He struggled with the first two legs of the World Cup,” said Tan.
“But with the help of our National Training Centre coaching staff and technical consultant Sonya Porter, he managed to identify and make some big changes to his strategy as well as to some of the technical aspects of his swim.
“It’s nice to see the changes translating into an Asian record and national record.”
Several world records fell on a spectacular last night of competition at the World Cup.
Australian Lani Pallister got the ball rolling when she won the women’s 800m freestyle final in 7min 54.00sec to demolish American Katie Ledecky’s 2022 mark of 7:57.42.
The 23-year-old told the World Aquatics website: “Katie’s done so many incredible things for the sport.
“I have her autograph sitting at home from 2014 and, for a period of time, it was my screensaver and it said ‘dream big’.
“So it’s really special that now I’m in my career and I’m racing her... to be someone that’s in a conversation with her and challenging those times is really, really incredible.”
Teammate Kaylee McKeown said she noticed the fire in Pallister, adding: “I could see the determination in Lani’s eyes when she was doing a pre-activation and I knew she was going to do something special.
“It’s been a long time coming for her... it’s really nice to see her get up there and break that world record.”
McKeown herself eclipsed the women’s 200m backstroke world mark for the second time in two weeks.
She and American Regan Smith pushed each other under world-record pace, with the former pulling ahead after the halfway mark and winning gold in 1:57.33.
It was faster than the 1:57.87 world mark the 24-year-old set the previous week. Smith, 23, clinched silver in 1:57.86.
Meanwhile, Hungary’s Hubert Kos, 22, established himself as the backstroke king.
Two days after his world record over 200m (1:45.12), he established the 100m record in 48.16sec to erase American Coleman Stewart’s 2021 mark of 48.33sec.
With that, he completed a hat-trick of backstroke titles at the meet along with the 50m gold he won on Oct 24.
The world-record breaking spree continued in the men’s 200m breaststroke final as Dutchman Caspar Corbeau, 24, became the first swimmer to break the two-minute barrier with his 1:59.52 effort.
He bettered Russian Kirill Prigoda’s 2018 timing of 2:00.16. In second place was Japan’s 16-year-old Shin Ohashi, who set a world junior record in 2:02.03.
American Kate Douglass, 23, also became the first woman to go under 50 seconds in the 100m freestyle when she won in 49.93sec to better her own record of 50.19sec set just a week ago.
