Record breakers honoured at swim awards ceremony

Yee Chun Leong
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

THE Brunei Amateur Swimming Association (BASA) yesterday honoured four national swimmers for breaking national open records in the final quarter of last year at an awards ceremony held at Saffron Restaurant in Kiulap.

Muhammad Isa Ahmad, Christian Nikles, Ashley Chai and Nur Haziq Samil became the first recipients of the national record breaking incentives scheme introduced by BASA at the end of August - whereby the swimmers received $300 for each new open record.

Present as the guest of honour to hand out the prizes was the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Yang Berhormat Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Awang Hj Aminuddin Ihsan Pehin Orang Kaya Saiful Mulok Dato Seri Paduka Hj Abidin.

Muhammad Isa, who is better known as Muis, was the biggest winner after breaking four new records.

The first two came during the 7^th Brunei Open (LC) Swimming Championships in September when he clocked 30.51s and 2:19.40 in the 50m breaststroke and 200m Inter Medley events respectively.

The other two were at the 14^th FINA World Swimming Championships (SC) in Hangzhou, China last month where he bettered his times in both the 50m and 100m breaststroke events with a time of 29.65s and 1:04.45 respectively.

On the other hand, Nikles broke two national open short course records at the Carnegie Winter Open in the UK held from Oct 27-28.

He swam the 100m backstroke with a time of 1:05.33 and clocked 1:01.41 for the 100m IM event.

However, Haziq broke the time for the 100m backstroke event less than a month later at the 3^rd ISB Sprints on Nov 25 with a time of 1:04.79.

Haziq, who was represented by his coach Hj Yussof, departed the Sultanate to Thailand earlier in the week and is now training at the FINA training centre at the Thanyapura Resort, Phuket under the FINA development scholarship for one year.