[ad_1]
SINGAPORE – In her first competition in two years, Justyn Phoa wasted no time at the Singapore Athletics (SA) Performance Test 1 on Sunday (November 29) when she broke the men’s national javelin record with her 61.07m effort. .
His throw at the Athletics House in Kallang eclipsed Ng Bock Huat’s 32-year-old record of 59.22 meters.
The 21-year-old national pitcher said: “I didn’t expect that pitch to break the record, but it was a nice surprise.
“Definitely (breaking the record) was on my mind, but it’s always very different to think about it than to achieve it.”
At the same match, the U-20 national record was also rewritten by 17-year-old Roy Ng, with his throw of 57.19 meters erasing the previous mark of 56.44 meters set by Wang Tingjia in 2018.
SA Performance Trial 1, SA’s first encounter since the breaker, is an invitational event to provide competitive opportunities to tier-ranked and top-eight ranked athletes.
Phoa was aiming to break the national record later this year, but thought it would take longer due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which interrupted her training program for a few months. During the circuit breaker and Phase 1 of Singapore’s economy reopening, which lasted from April to mid-June, it was limited to doing only bodyweight exercises.
The Nanyang Technological University student believes that training with national shooting coach Akid Chong since the beginning of the year is what made the difference for him on Sunday. With Chong, he has had a structured training program to follow, unlike in 2018, when he trained only after enlisting in the national service.
“In 2018, I was just doing the exercises that I wanted to do on the same day,” said Phoa, who in 2017 broke the record for 47-year-old A Division A boys with her 59.06m effort.
“But now Akid divides the training cycles into different phases such as strength and speed to adequately suit the competition.”
While Phoa had been shooting distances of approximately 54m to 56m in practice, he had been working on her technique, which Chong feels was finally right on Sunday. This time around, he managed to maintain his upright stance in the power position after his penultimate step, resulting in his best throw yet.
Chong, 30, believes that Phoa can eventually exceed 70 meters, a goal they are trying to work towards for next year’s SEA Games in Vietnam.
The bronze medal distance, which is the benchmark for qualifying, for last year’s Games in the Philippines was 70.88m, while gold medalist Melvin Calano threw 72.86m.
“We are planning to take some time to train and we are not rushing anything. We want to take it easy and cover our ground properly,” Chong said. “If we continue to train as is in this period, I think there is a good chance that we can make it (by competing in the 2021 SEA Games).”
[ad_2]
