SEA Games: Record-breaking Vietnamese teen wins 2 golds, seeks 11
PUBLISHED ONJune 06, 2015 2:00 PM
SINGAPORE - Vietnam teenager Nguyen Thi Anh Vien won two SEA Games golds in record-breaking time on Saturday and then said she hoped to repeat the feat a staggering nine more times.
The Florida-trained 18-year-old stole the show with huge wins in the women's 800m and 400m individual medley as records tumbled on day one in the Singapore pool.
Singapore's Quah Zheng Wen, who is also swimming a marathon 12 events, lost out to Vietnam's Hoang Quy Phuoc in the men's 200m freestyle before he won the 100m backstroke.
All four wins by Nguyen, Hoang and Quah were in event record time as the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games swimming competition got off to a lightning start.
Pool events are dominating the beginning of the 36-sport, regional Games with Singaporean Olympic hopeful Joseph Schooling also going for nine gold medals from Sunday.
The biennial, 11-nation tournament clicked into high gear on Saturday, the first full day of competition, with more than 40 gold medals on offer.
Nguyen set the tone when she broke the Games 400m medley record in the morning heats, and then lowered it again by more than a second to 4min 42.88sec.
The emerging star finished 51 seconds ahead of Myanmar's 10-year-old Oo Shun Lei Maw, who was half-a-minute adrift of the field when she touched in 5:34.00 to warm applause.
Nguyen also obliterated the competition when she won the 800m in a Games-record 8:34.85, 18 seconds ahead of second-placed Ammiga Himathongkom of Thailand.
Afterwards, she said her intense schedule was all part of her training for the July-August world championships in Russia, where she expects to enter three or four events.
"I hope so, yeah," she said, when asked if she could win all 11 in Singapore.
"I think I can do better... I knew I could do this," she said, adding "also I want" to win all of her 11 races in record time.