Jeremy Joint Riong competing in the Youth Men's 50-metre butterfly event, en-route to breaking his personal best time, of the Youth Olympic Games at the Singapore Sports School yesterday. Picture: BT/Amir Amin

Jeremy Joint Riong successfully accomplished his mission at the Youth Olympic Games by breaking his personal record in the 50-metre butterfly yesterday.

The 17-year-old national swimmer clocked 30.68 seconds in the Youth Men's 50m butterfly event at the Singapore Sports School. His former best time was 31.78s.

This makes it two out of two for the Katok Sixth Form Centre student who managed to break his 100m butterfly personal best on Monday.

He shaved two seconds to claim a new best time of 1:11.27 in the meet, in which he reached the 50m mark at 31.49s.

Riong owed the result in some ways to meeting Youth Olympic Games ambassador Yelena Isinbayeva during the Chat with Champions session at the Youth Olympic Village on Tuesday night.

"Seeing them at the top level, it just inspired me to push myself," said Riong.

"Its not easy (to compete) since the standard here is at an international level. Yet I am adamant to show that we can," he added.

Riong placed sixth of seven in heat one after Ghana's Ralph Benjamin Teiko Quaye was disqualified.

Brazilian Pedro Antonio Costa clocked 24.98s to top the heat.

Sun Bowei of China placed second while South Africa's Murray McDougall was in third.

All three made the cut to swim in the finals tonight.

Ukrainian Andrii Govorov had the best time of the semi-finals, held later on the day, with 23.46s.

National swimming coach Eva Wong was delighted with her charges performance.

"I'm glad that he's been able to do what he was aiming for. This is a good example for the younger generation. He can still manage to top his time at the age of 17, so the younger generation definitely can," said Wong.

Though Riong had done his part in the Games, he is far from finished as he expects more to come from him in the future.

"I want him to be better and faster, shave more time then it will be enough. At least this result showed that the intensive training in Kota Kinabalu paid off," said the coach.

Riong and compatriot Amanda Liew Jia Xin went on three weeks of intensive training in preparation for the Games in Sabah.

Courtesy from Brunei Times