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Christina lands prized ticket to World Aquatics Championships

PETALING JAYA: Young breaststroker Christina Loh (pic) has landed a prized ticket to the World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai next month after rocking the 35th edition of the South East Asian age-group swimming championships in Vietnam recently.

The 16-year-old made the biggest splash among the Malaysian swimmers as she set new meet records en route to winning all the three breaststroke races in her first participation in the Group 1 age-group category.

Christina equalled her own national mark of 32.31 for the second time this year in claiming the 50m breaststroke final, erasing the seven-year-old standing record belonging to Vietnam swimmer Bui Thi Hai.
The qualifying standard for the World Championships for the womenā€™s 50m breaststroke is also 32.31.

Christina will thus join Khoo Cai Lin (womenā€™s 800m freestyle), Chan Kah Yan (womenā€™s 50m backstroke), Chui Lai Kwan (womenā€™s 100m freestyle) and Kevin Yeap (menā€™s 800m freestyle) to make her debut appearance at the world meet.

Christina also won the 100m breaststroke gold medal with an impressive time of 1:11.29 to smash the previous record of 1:14.20 held by Sandy Mo of Singapore since 2004. The Penang-born lass, who moved to Kuala Lumpur to pursue a career in swimming, made it a clean sweep of all breaststroke titles by coming out tops over the 200m distance as well.

Christina clocked 2:36.97 to better the previous record of 2:38.50 set by Ketin Nuttapang of Singapore in 2009.

Christina has been blazing a hot trail in the shorter womenā€™s breaststroke races as she dipped below the 33-second mark for the first time at the national age-group meet in March.

Christina set 32.31 to improve on her own national mark of 33.22 at that time and she has now emerged as a potential gold medallist for Malaysia at the Indonesia SEA Games in November.

Amateur Swimming Union of Malaysia secretary Edwin Chong said Christina is looking good to bag her first SEA Games gold medal if she can clock a similar time in Palembang.

ā€œThe womenā€™s 50m breaststroke event will be contested at the SEA Games for the first time and she has swam the fastest time in the region this year.

ā€œIn fact, she also stands a chance to fight for the 100m breaststroke gold medal if she improves. The womenā€™s breaststroke races will be strong prospects for gold as we can also hope on Siow Yi Ting.

ā€œShe has returned home here to train with us after a long break to concentrate on her studies in the United States and we hope she will be ready competitively by the end of the year,ā€ he said.



THE STAR

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