Olympics the goal as Letitia Sim lowers four Singapore swim records in three days

SINGAPORE – Letitia Sim confirmed her status as Singapore’s breaststroke queen on Friday, twice lowering the national record in the women’s 50m breaststroke. Sim now owns all the fastest times for breaststroke in the 50m, 100m and 200m.

She clocked 31.17 seconds in the morning heats of the Singapore National Swimming Championships to erase Roanne Ho’s mark of 31.23sec, set en route to a silver at the 2018 Asian Games.

In the final eight hours later, Sim eclipsed her freshly minted record by 0.01sec, touching the wall in 31.16sec.

This was the fourth time in three days that the 20-year-old had lowered a national record at the meet at the OCBC Aquatic Centre.

On Wednesday, she broke her own 200m breaststroke mark with a 2min 27.91sec effort, just under the 2:28.49 she had registered to win gold at the Cambodia SEA Games in May. A day later, she clocked 1:07.27 to eclipse her 100m record of 1:07.86 set in 2021.

Significantly, this new personal best is close to the Paris 2024 Olympic “A” cut timing of 1:06.79, which remains her target.

Sim said: “I took a gap year from school just to focus on the Olympics… ultimately that is my end goal.”

Speaking on her 100m swim, the University of Michigan student added: “I really wanted to break 1min 7sec. In my nap, I dreamt about breaking it, and then I saw the timing, and I was just like it’s OK. But when I saw the coaches’ excitement, I got excited too.”

Her coach Gustavo Schirru explained: “The end game is achieving the ticket to Paris. At the SEA Games, she was 1.3sec away from the ‘A’ cut on the 100m breaststroke, and now she’s just half a second. We’re moving in the right direction.”

National swimming head coach Gary Tan is satisfied with Sim’s performances, saying: “Coming off the SEA Games and performing even better is actually a bigger plus point for us.”

However, the journey towards her records was not always smooth sailing as Sim had experienced some discomfort in her knees.

She was concerned it would affect her training plans, especially with her pet breaststroke events requiring good kicking technique. Additionally, the tough training regimen led to tears shed before the meet.

She said: “I actually thought I was going to swim really bad here because leading up I was crying, telling my sister that I can’t do it.”

Sim admitted that she is always very anxious and has been working on her emotional management.

She believes she has learnt a lot since last year. That helps her feel “at ease” going into the July 14-30 world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where she feels she will have “a really good meet”.

She is also eyeing a medal at the Asian Games in Hangzhou from Sept 23 to Oct 8.

“This meet definitely gave me the confidence to be where I need to be,” she added.

“I just need to race by myself again and hopefully everything will just level itself out.”