KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian swimmers Ananda Lim and Khiew Hoe Yean broke short-course national records in the 50m freestyle and 200m backstroke respectively at the Shanghai World Cup yesterday.
Hoe Yean recorded one minute 56.89 seconds in Heat 2 of the 200m backstroke preliminary round to break Tern Jian Han's national mark of 2:02.32s, set at a World Cup event in Beijing in 2017.
That was good enough to place Hoe Yean in third place in the heat and qualify him for the final. The heat winner was South African Pieter Coetze (1:51.89s) and American Jack Dahlgren (1:53:97s) was second fastest.
Hoe Yean, 22, who competed in the Paris Olympics in August, improved on his qualifying time in the final by posting 1:56.55s to finish seventh out of eight swimmers.
Coetze won the gold with a time of 1:49.12s. Italy's Lorenzo Mora (1:51.33s) was second and Australia's Enoch Robb (1:51.44s) rounded up the podium.
Ananda posted 22.27s to break Chan Jie's 50m freestyle record of 22.33s set last year at the Selangor Sprint meet.
However, that time was only good enough for seventh place in Heat 4 of the preliminary round and Ananda did not qualify for the final.
Another Malaysian, Terence Ng, clocked 22.83s for eighth place in the same heat.