Brunei's Anderson Lim swimming
at the London Games yesterday.
Picture: Infofoto

It's all about the training and hard work for national swimmer Anderson Lim Chee Wei.

It all paid off for Lim who peaked at the right time when he swam in the heats of the 200-metre freestyle of the London Olympics at the Aquatics Centre of Olympic Park on Sunday.

The first Olympic swimmer from the Sultanate comfortably set a new national record of 2:02.26 in his event.

The previous best by the 16-year-old Bruneian was 2:05.19 which he set just last month during a Summer Camp.

His goal at the July 27-Aug 12 Olympics was to better that time and he did it with ease.

Lim, who is based in Florida, United States, claimed that there was no secret to him shaving off some three seconds from his previous best time but felt that he was just fully prepared for the meet.

"I wasn't as tapered and rested for the previous meet as it was a warm-up for the main event (Olympics). This time I was fully tapered and all the hard work has paid off," said Lim during an interview with The Brunei Times yesterday.

"I've been training hard during the Bolles School Summer Camp and there were lots of other swimmers from different states training together," he added.

"So we had a lot of good swimmers all at one place training together and it helped me as well," continued Lim, who eventually finished 40th out of the 41 swimmers in six heats.

He also went on to thank the Brunei Darussalam National Olympic Council (BNOC) and Department of Youth and Sports for giving him the opportunity to swim at the biggest competition in the world.

"I would also like to thank my parents (Lim Mok Seng and Jessie Lim), coaches and friends for the full support," said Lim.

"My parents are here but too bad they couldn't get tickets to watch inside the arena. So they settled by watching on the big screen just outside," he added.

Meanwhile, the duo of Ak Hafiy Tajuddin Pg Rositi and Maziah Mahusin are continuing on training before their events.

The latter is only undergoing light training as advised by the doctor until she is fully fit from flu and cough which she caught upon landing in London.

Maziah is set to compete in the 400m event on Friday while her partner will take to the tracks the following day.

Her best time is 1:00.32 which she recorded at the 19th Open International Athletics Tournament in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, earlier this month.

On the other hand, Ak Hafiy Tajuddin's personal best is 49.23 seconds which he set at the 2012 Taiwan Open Athletics Championships in May.

The Sultanate's participation at the Olympics has been made possible courtesy of universality places that the world governing bodies of athletics and swimming, IAAF and FINA respectively, have opened to countries that have no qualified athletes.

Courtesy from Brunei Times