The 2022 SEA Games have just kicked off!
In Singapore’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay team are Joseph Schooling, Mikkel Lee, Quah Zheng Wen and Jonathan Tan.
On the 14th of May, the quartet won gold for Singapore in the My Dinh Water Sports Palace, finishing first by approximately three seconds (3:17.19), followed by Malaysia (3:20.13) and Vietnam (3:21.81).
Singapore was all set to continue its 4x100m freestyle relay champion title from the last SEA Games, where they set a record timing (3:16.82) with a team comprising Schooling, Tan, Quah and Darren Chua.
However, halfway through their post-match interviews, the team was given the unfortunate news that they had been disqualified on a technicality – a fractional early take-off by one of the swimmers.
Malaysia was also disqualified based on a false start of 0.12 seconds, leaving Vietnam to win the gold medal, followed by Indonesia with the silver, and Thailand with the bronze.
Coach’s Statement
”I think this is something that happens in a competitive environment and it just goes to show our boys are hungry to win that medal. We’ll turn something that was bad today into something good hopefully in the next few days,” national head coach Gary Tan commented.
”It’s based off a technicality, it’s very tough to make that protest even though we were trying to find a reason and wanted to make sure that this was not an issue of a technical error.”
“I don’t want to put it in a bad way, but there have been a lot of problems with what’s been happening technically on the ground here. We work with whatever the circumstance is and we work with it.”
“Kudos to the boys. Not a fault of anybody’s; I think there’s something that happens in a competitive environment.”
In this year’s Hanoi Games, Schooling will be defending his 100m butterfly champion title.
It’s a shame about the disqualification, but we’re sure the team will brush it off and come back stronger.
Featured Image: SportSG (Andy Chua)