Anderson Lim Chee Wei may have bettered his previous best time in the men's 100m butterfly (short course) at the 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games yesterday, but it simply was not enough for him to progress from the heats.
Lim clocked 1:00.51 in a performance he termed "bad" yesterday, and though it was better than the 1.01.70 he recorded the only other time he swum a competitive 100m short course (25m) butterfly event at 2011's 4th Commonwealth Youth Games in Isle of Man, United Kingdom, the country's sole swimmer here in South Korea still finished last in his eight-man third heat.
China's Xu Zhijie was first to the finish line with a time of 53.33s and would qualify for the final, 0.08s behind Indonesia's Glenn Victor Sutanto whose 53.25s in the fourth heat marked him out as the fastest of all 28 swimmers in the category, and 7.26s ahead of Lim.
Lim, Brunei's first Olympian swimmer, had said his aim was to break the national record in all three events he was set to compete at the Dowon Aquatics Center, but the 100m butterfly still remains in the possession of Christian Nikles who swum 59.49s during last year's FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup in Singapore, a successful trip for the national team after they arrived home wih 14 new open national short course records.
Lim takes to the pool again for the 200m freestyle heats today before his third and final event, the 100m freestyle heats, tomorrow.
The 17-year-old holds the record for the 200m freestyle at 2:00.50 while Nikles' 54.21s are the digits to beat in the 100m freestyle.
"My time was just bad... Tomorrow (Tuesday) will be better," promised Lim.
"I didn't have a good second turn and I had to glide into the wall... My legs were fine but my arms were a bit sore over the last 25m," he added.
The fact that there is no short course (25m) pool in Brunei has not helped Lim's preparations, with the swimmer having to resort to a club in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, for his training needs prior to leaving for Incheon.
Though he has been taking to the practice pool at the Dowon Aquatics Center, Lim said the difference in size means it serves as a less than ideal training ground.
"The warm-up pool is 22m long so that's about one and a half strokes less," he explained.
