Coakley shatters RP, SEAG marks

BEIJING – Hawaii-based Daniel Coakley, watched by his entire family coming from halfway round the world,  established a new Philippine and Southeast Asian standard in the 50-m freestyle and brought to four the number of new Philippine marks by the powerful United States-based swimming team yesterday at the Water Cube.

Coakley clocked 22.69 seconds to break the record of 22.80 he set in winning the same event in the 2005 Manila SEA Games.

Overall leader of the 13 heats was Frenchman Amaury Leveaux, whose 21.46 seconds obliterated the Olympic record of 21.91 by Alexander Popov in the 1992 Barcelona Games.

So fast were the times of the top 15 seven other swimmers passed the Olympic mark in the heats alone.

Coakley was 39th overall, ..56 of a second behind the cut-off time of 22.17.

Other Fillipino swimmers who broke the national record were James Walsh in the 200m butterfly (1:59.39), Christel Simms in the 100m freestyle (56:16), and Miguel Molina in the 200m individual medley (2:01.69).

The survival board of Team Philippines read: Seven down, eight left.

Still standing and in the race for a medal from the original 15-member RP athletic delegation are Simms in the 50-m freestyle and Ryan Arabejo in the 1,500m freestyle in swimming, Sheila Mae Perez in women’s platform diving, Ryan Rexel Fabriga in the 10m platform diving, long jumpers Henry Dagmil and Marestella Torres and taekwondo jins Tshomlee Go and Toni Rivero.

 Simms, who broke her own mark in the 100m freestyle two days earlier, sees action as the second-ranked swimmer in the sixth heat of the 50m freestyle. Her Philippine record of 26.31 puts her at lane 5 where she aims to hit the 25-second mark, an improvement over her seven-month old mark.

Perez, still bothered by a nagging back pain, guns for a place in the 18-woman semfinals after today’s 32-woman preliminaries, while Arabejo, a La Salle student on a swimming scholarship at Bolles School in Jackson, Florida, competes in the 1,500m freestyle, aiming to reset his mark of 15:39.86.

On Monday, Dagmil sees action in the long jump athletics. Torres competes in the women’s side Tuesday.

The country’s top two bets cap the Philippines’ schedule with Go competing Aug. 20 and Rivero on Aug. 22. All the preliminaries, repechage, semifinals and medal rounds in taekwondo will be held on the same day.