The most prestigious swim meet in the country, the Malaysia Open Swimming, has finally come to an end last weekend after 2 years missing its bliss because of the current pandemic situation. Last year, the meet was only opened to those in the national squad in a quarantine-based training.
The 64th Malaysia Open Swimming Championship held from 3rd March 2022 to 6th March 2022 at National Aquatic Centre, KL Sport City, Bukit Jalil was sanctioned by FINA as the qualifying meet to 31st South East Asian Games 2022 in Vietnam and 19th FINA World Championships 2022 in Budapest. Despite the absence of participation from foreign swimmers, the four days meet registered a total number of 218 local swimmers who represented their respective states.
24 female and 37 male enthusiastic WPKL swimmers took part in the meet. Apart from several outstanding results achieved by WPKL swimmers particularly from our swimmers who train with the national team, our young swimmers did pretty well too.
All eyes were on Khiew Hoe Yean or Steve, waiting to witness him qualify into SEA Games and World Champ and to break some records, even though he restricted himself to only individual 4 events, as advised by his coach Chris Martin to concentrate on qualifying to the major games.
Steve made a clean sweep in his events earning 6 gold for WPKL team, including the relays. He clocked 3:50:77 for his 400m freestyle on day one to beat the A-SEA Games and B-World Champ qualifying time.
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| Steve Khiew was ahead of his competitors in all freestyle events |
On the following days, Steve was unstoppable winning another 3 individual gold medals for his 100m freestyle (new PB of 50:35), 200m freestyle (new PB of 1:48:77) and 1500m freestyle (new PB of 15:30:90). Not only he broke the 1500m freestyle meet record but he also qualified for B-SEA Games and B-World Champ time for all of the events.
Steve Khiew proved to be the vital anchor swimmers in WPKL relay team to win the 4x100m Medley relay with his teammates Khiew Tze Yean, Jayden Tan and Yap Min Shun. On day three, he led team WPKL 4x100m freestyle relay team together with Yap Min Shun, Khiew Tze Yean and Gabriel Francis McCartan to win another gold for WPKL.
Jayden Tan another rising star for WPKL team showed that he is good in all strokes by improving his 400m IM time to 4:29:16 making a cut for B-SEA Games. He also contributed 1 silver and 1 bronze for WPKL as he came second behind Steve Khiew in 1500m freestyle and third place in 400m freestyle event.
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| Jayden Tan |
Meanwhile, Sebastian Soon, who has just returned to training recently swam some decent times to win 2 bronze in 200IM & 400 IM events.
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| Sebastian Soon |
To complete the 10 gold medal haul for WPKL team, Chong, Xin Lin won 3 gold in her 50m backstroke, 200m backstroke and 100m backstroke. Her new PB of 1:05:57 for 100m backstroke was just a half of second shy of the B-SEA Games qualifying time, an awesome time for a 14 year old girl.
WPKL team positioned itself second with an impressive 30 medals comprising of 10 gold, 9 silver and 11 bronze.
The 64th Malaysia Open Swimming Championships results showed WPKL swimmers have a great potential to gear up and achieve more outstanding results for WPKL team in the upcoming SUKMA and MIAG meets, especially the younger athletes. Our continuous support in the state development program will surely help these swimmers emerge as our future hope in swimming as our main objective is to produce as many talents as possible who can compete at the high level competitions.
We also congratulate the 4 KL swimmers who have made the cut to SEA Games Aquatic Squad, namely, Steve Khiew, Jayden Tan, Sebastian Soon and Bryan Leong.
Great job guys and well done to all WPKL swimmers!
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