ANGLO-Chinese School (Independent) thwarted the Raffles family of schools' attempt to repeat their 2008 sweep of all divisional titles at the Schools National Swimming Championships when they won the B and C Boys' crowns yesterday.
ACS(I) entered the final day of the competition at the Singapore Sports School with 103 points in the B Boys' division. They were behind the Sports School by a point, with Raffles Institution third on 93 points.
The ACSians had a 35-point cushion over RI in the C Boys' standings. It meant they were staring at a possible double title win.
Said ACS(I) B Boys' captain Tay Aik Wen: 'Winning both titles was a goal, but it wasn't a sure case in the B Boys' division. So that motivated us to go for it.'
And they delivered. They won three of their four races yesterday to clinch the B crown with 167 points, 29 more than RI.
And they took the C crown with a tally of 226 points, leaving RI a distant second on 165 points.
But, despite ACS(I)'s double, this year's meet was still dominated by the Raffles family of schools.
Raffles Institution (Junior College) took the A Boys' and Girls' crowns, while Raffles Girls' School won the B and C Girls' titles.
Five new records were also set yesterday. ACS(I)'s Lionel Khoo and RI(JC)'s Ng Jia Hao rewrote their C Boys' 50m breaststroke and A Boys' 100m breaststroke records respectively.
Lionel, 14, won in 30.27sec to break his own 30.81sec mark, while Jia Hao, 17, clocked 1min 5.16sec to erase his 1:05.80 record.
Shana Lim (Hwa Chong International) clocked 1:03.96 in the B Girls' 100m backstroke to break the record of 1:04.64 set by Tao Li in 2007.
ACS(I) and RI(JC) also raised the bar in the C Boys' and A Girls' 4x50m freestyle relays respectively. ACS(I) won in 1:43.02 (old record: 1:43.89), while RI(JC) finished in 1:52.20 (OR: 1:53.04).
The records took the final number of new meet marks set at this year's championships to 24, double the number set last year.
Some coaches had feared that the shift of this year's meet from its traditional July date to April to accommodate the Asian Youth Games in July would hurt their charges' record-breaking abilities.
Said Swimfast Aquatic Club's David Lim, who coaches several swimmers from the top schools: 'I think most of them are still fresh from the National Age Group Championships in March and this month's Asean Inter-Club Age Group Swimming Championships.
'So, a lot of them continued to train, and stayed in competitive form.'
Unfortunately, the day's proceedings were marred by glitches in the electronic timing system during the A Boys' 100m freestyle and B Girls' 50m freestyle finals.
That left 16 frustrated swimmers without final timings, although their final positions were announced officially later.
Said RI's Nicholas Sim, who won the A Boys' 100m freestyle race: 'I wanted to see my time as I'm going for the South-east Asia Games time trials in June. It's so disappointing that the glitch had to happen.'
At times, the scoreboard also failed to show the split timings for some races and displayed wrong positions for others.
Kelvyna Chan, the principal of Anglo-Chinese Junior College who was the event's national convener this year, said: 'The electronic timers were faulty but the results in terms of positioning were clear. There were no complaints lodged.
'The committee will review the matter and make improvements next year.'
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