Day 3 medalists for Philippines with PSI president Lani Velasco and team coach Sherwin Santiago. Photo by Celest Flores-Colina
PHNOM PENH—The Philippines doubled its gold medal output from last year after a strong finish in the 43rd Southeast Asia Age Group Swim Championships Sunday at Morodok Techo National Sports Complex here.
Highlighted by the golden swim of the quartet of Mishka Sy, Desirae Mangaoang, Samantha Banos and Mia Tandingan in the girls’ 4×100-meter medley relay in day 3, the Philippines concluded the swimfest with eight gold, 13 silver and nine bronze medals, good for fifth place.
This is the Filipinos’ best finish in the 10-country swim meet since their 13-10-12 gold-silver-bronze medal haul in the 2010 edition held in Laguna. They wound up with a 4-10-16 tally last year.
Some of this batch’s strongest girls swimmers, Sy, Mangaoang, Banos and Tandingan were ahead from start to finish and wrapped up the 4×100 race in 4:19.25 for the Philippines’ first relay gold in the tournament history.
Mangaoang, the Fil-American swimmer who is representing the country for the first time, came out as the Philippines’ most bemedaled athlete after she also nabbed the gold— her third —in girls’ 200m breaststroke with a time of 2:34.38. She took home a silver in the 100m breaststroke on Saturday.
Swimming in his last age group meet, the 18-year-old Jerard Jacinto also made it a golden double after ruling the boys’ 16-18 50m backstroke event at 26.40.
Jacinto, who swims for De La Salle-Zobel, though, rued the missed opportunity to beat the meet record in the 100m backstroke event last Monday.
“It’s a bit of mixed emotions. I’m happy and kind of sad because I was really aiming for the meet record, especially in the 100m back, and my personal best is already that, but I had a lot of errors,” said Jacinto. “But I’m still so thankful that I won the gold.”
Ivo Enot, who on Saturday broke an 18-year old 13 and under national record in the 200m backstroke, plucked a silver in the boys’ 13U 50m backstroke with a clocking of 29.86.
Liaa Amoguis also got a second silver medal after tapping the wall at 2:29.81 in the girls’ 13U 200m butterfly swim.
Tandingan earlier swam to another bronze medal with a time of 58.90 in girls’ 14-15 100m freestyle while Banos, who has a two silvers, added a bronze to her showing after registering 2:20.15 in the 200m butterfly.
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese once again led the three-day meet with whopping 43 gold, 41 silver and 25 bronze medal haul. Thailand (28-18-30) and Singapore (11-16-16) finished second and third, respectively.
Brunei, host Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar failed to make it to the medal board.