The Brunei contingent for the
Commonwealth Youth Games
upon their arrival at the Brunei
International Airport from the Isle of
Man, United Kingdom. Picture:
BT/ Dennis Lim

Smiles were abound yesterday after the Sultanate's swimmers returned from a fruitful expedition in the 4th Commonwealth Youth Games.

Anderson Lim Chee Wei, Florence Sea Wern Lyn and national swim coach Eric Landa yesterday touched down in Brunei following their participation in the Games held at the Isle of Man, United Kingdom.

Landa said that he was happy with the results of the event, seeing seven personal best times broken despite one disqualification in their eight events.

He shared that the results were unexpected, due to restrictions.

"I didn't expect much, mainly because training was rough. In the month of Ramadhan, we still trained as usual but it was hard to get the whole schedule going," Landa told The Brunei Times. "Sometimes the swimming pools are closed, sometimes it was open but we were still restricted.

"After that we had Hari Raya for five days so we trained at somebody's house, at a private little 15-metre pool. That was our preparation so what we accomplished in the Commonwealth Youth Games was good, very good for the swimmers."

Meanwhile, Brunei's sole representative in track and field, Rozmacynthia Simbilan, faced tougher competition.

The 16-year-old failed to follow suite with her compatriots as she struggled to match her personal best times.

Landa said in regards to her performance, "I don't really know how to judge that, I know what her personal best was. But with that said, her personal best times were different as they were in different circumstances. There was a storm while she was running for both of her events.

"The weather conditions were caused by a hurricane that affected the United States of America. During Rozmacynthia's event, the tail of the hurricane was affecting the results of not just herself individually, but for the other competitors as well.

"With that said, I'm not making any excuses for her but I think that probably the winds played a little bit of a part in her performance at the youth games. It wasn't too easy. Even for the other competitors, their times weren't really fast."

He jokingly shared, "The sprints were very fast though, probably because the winds came from the back to push them forward."

The high spirited national swim coach revealed that the swimmers will be resuming their usual training day routines now that they're back in preparations for events in the last half of the year.

"Basically everything starts again; we don't really take a break. This afternoon (yesterday) at 3.30 we are going to start again so these swimmers will be back in the water and I will be there coaching."

"The next competition is going to be in Palembang, Indonesia for the Asian Age Group Swimming Championships. This is a competition for the U-18 athletes of Asia. This would include China, Japan and loads more so it will be quite a competition."

It still remains to be seen if swimming will be shortlisted as one of the sports that Brunei will contend in during this year's edition of the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Indonesia.

Landa then went on to explain that he has set his sights on long term successes by the Sultanate.

"The goal for me is to win a medal in six years time. For this year, there isn't much we can do but in two years time we have to be competitive," he said.

"The goal is to get a medal, they have never done that so why not. Six years is a long time.

"This also means that the swimmers I have now might or might not be the ones to make it... Considering their age now, in six year's time we would have a very different group. So we're working really hard to prepare the team as much as we can to achieve this," added the coach.

Courtesy from Brunei Times