JESSIE KHING LACUNA appeared bound to become the country’s next best swimming sensation after capturing a second gold medal in the 41st Singapore Age Group Swimming Championships at the Singapore Sports School over the weekend.
Days after surpassing veteran Miguel Molina’s national record in the 200-meter freestyle, the 16-year-old Lacuna topped the 100m freestyle in a neck-and-neck battle with a record time of 52.13 seconds on Saturday night, beating Clement Lim of the Swimfast Aquatic Club of Singapore by .04 seconds and, in the process, breaking Mark Chay’s meet mark of 52.67 set in 1999.
It has been a swashbuckling performance for Lacuna in Singapore. Lacuna won the 200m freestyle final on Thursday with a time of one minute and 51.20 seconds for his first gold medal on Friday, moments after checking in at 1:50.90 in the preliminaries, erasing the 1:51.75 Southeast Asian Games star Molina set in the Laos Games just three months ago.
Lacuna also snatched a silver medal in the 400m freestyle with a time of 3:59.75, only .73 seconds behind gold-medal winner Haruki Washio of Japan.
Lacuna actually surpassed the Youth Olympic Games B 100m freestyle qualifying mark of 53.50 seconds. However, he still has to wait for confirmation for the Youth Olympic Games set from August 14 to 26 in Singapore as his time will still be ranked with other swimmers in the world.
Jasmine Alkhaldi, meanwhile, grabbed a bronze medal in the 100m freestyle with a time of 57.30 seconds in a closer race surpassing the Youth Olympic Games B qualifying mark of 1:00.03.
Alkhaldi, 16, touched the wall just .11 seconds late of gold medalist Ting Wen Quah of Swimfast Aquatic Club of Singapore and .07 seconds behind silver winner Aya Takano of Japan.
Jose Gonzalez also snatched a bronze medal in the 200m backstroke with a clocking of 2:08.39 going into the final day of competitions last night.
Hidetaka Okura of Japan and Rainer Ng of Swimfast Aquatic Club won the race with similar times of 2:06.05.
The 16-year-old Gonzalez also took the bronze in the 100m backstroke, checking in at 1:00.25. Ng of Swimfast Aquatic Club of Singapore won the gold in 57.67, followed by Okura of Japan (59.06).
Lacuna, Alkhaldi and Gonzalez trained at the New South Wales Institute of Sports earlier in the year.
Lacuna and Alkhaldi went for the gold medal late Sunday night after emerging as top seeds in their events. Lacuna topped the preliminaries of the 200m butterfly in 2:04.64, while Alkhaldi finished the 200m breastroke in 2:25.36.
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