Olympic title-holder Joseph Schooling celebrated on Saturday as he reached his target of six gold medals at the Southeast Asian Games, ending his season on a high after a disappointing world championships. On the final night of swimming in Kuala Lumpur, Schooling propelled Singapore's 4x100m medley relay team to victory in 3min 37.46sec, beating the Games record they set two years ago in their home pool.
Schooling, Quah Zheng Wen, Lionel Khoo and Darren Lim whooped and cheered as they left the pool deck, after the convincing win left Singapore on a table-topping 19 golds for the meet. Schooling, the Olympic 100m butterfly champion, increased Singapore's narrow lead by just under two seconds in the butterfly leg. Their eventual margin of victory was 2.88sec over Indonesia.
"It's a great feeling. What's even better is that I think we had a great team display over the past six days," said Schooling, 22. "It's been a long meet but I think there are a lot of positives I can take going into the new year. I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of things."
Schooling's six golds, which include three individual titles, come after he could only take 100m butterfly bronze at the world championships, a year after his stunning Olympic win. "That was a great race by all of us collectively. We beat the national record with solid swims all around. I couldn't have done it without these guys. They're the ones that did the bulk of the work," he said. Earlier Vietnam's Nguyen Thi Anh Vien, nicknamed "Little Mermaid", flashed a victory sign as she snared her eighth win of the competition in the women's 200m freestyle, clocking a Games-record 1:59.24.