Chua fades, breaks 10-year Phl record

Southeast Asian Games gold medalist Xiandi Chua failed to advance past preliminaries but still set a new national record in the women’s 400-meter individual medley event in the World Swimming Championships in Budapest on Saturday.

The 23-year-old De La Salle University standout clocked four minutes and 43.85 seconds to shatter the 10-year-old mark of 4:54.75 set by Hannah Dato in the World Swimming Championships in Doha in 2014.

Despite her record-breaking feat, Chua was still no match to the superior talent of other competitors as she wound up 23rd in the preliminary heats.

In fact, the eighth-placer in the event, Emma Carrasco of Spain, clocked 4:32.20, proving that advancing to the medal round wasn’t a piece of cake.

It was the second time that Chua broke the national record in this short-course event in the Hungarian capital.

Prior to that, she teamed up with Chloe Isleta, Jason Mahmutoglu and Adrian Philip Eichler in posting 1:46.56 in the mixed 4x50-meter relay.

The last time Chua made it to the final round of the short-course tourney was when she finished seventh in the women’s 200m butterfly event of the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup-Stop 3 at the OCBC Aquatic Centre in Singapore from 31 October to 2 November.

Meanwhile, Mahmutoglu broke the national record of the men’s 50-meter backstroke after clocking 24.29 seconds last Friday. He finished 40th overall in the heats.

Jerard Jacinto previously held the record in that event after submitting a time of 24.36 seconds in the 2022 World Swimming Championships in Melbourne.

Like Chua, it was also the second time for Mahmutoglu to shatter an individual record after posting in 23.84 seconds in the men’s 50m butterfly.