One down, one more to go.

It was a close shave for national swimmer Christian Nikles.

The 13-year-old set a new national record in the men's 100 metres freestyle at the 14th Fina World Championships in Shanghai, China, yesterday.

He battled his nerves and clocked a time of 57.44 seconds to finish 81st out of the field of 105 swimmers at the Shanghai Oriential Sports Centre.

He has been steadily improving, considering that he had only set the previous record of 57.59s at the Asean School Games (ASG) in Singapore early last month.

There is only one more event left at the tournament for Nikles with the 50m freestyle event tomorrow.

His best time for the 50m is 26.01s, also set at the ASG.

Before leaving for the Shanghai meet, national swim coach Eric Landa said that he was not expecting any medals at the highly-competitive event but was hoping that his swimmers will be able to break their own national records at the July 16-31 competition.

The Dutch had got two out of three right so far with Anderson Lim Chee Wei (pic), who is the only other swimmer at the tournament, having broken his previous record for the 200m freestyle event clocking a time of 2:06.04 on Monday.

The 15-year-old, who is a big fan of Michael Phelps, went close in his first attempt in the 400m freestyle on Sunday but only managed a time of 4:34.95. The record still stands at 4:33.76.

This is the first time that both swimmers are competing at the world championships and they are definitely under some amount of pressure.

Apart from swimming, four other aquatic disciplines are also being contested in Shanghai; diving, synchronised swimming, water polo and open water swimming.

The competition will also serve as qualifiers for the 2012 London Olympics.

This means that there will be no Bruneian female swimmers in London next year considering that none were sent to the China meet due to the lack of quality.

Courtesy from Brunei Times