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‘It’s all about winning the gold medal’: Schooling

RIO DE JANERIO – Joseph Schooling's heart is set on gold, declaring that it is the only medal he wants to win in the 100m final at the Rio Olympics.

Joseph Schooling in the 100m butterfly semi-finals on Aug 11, 2016. Photo: Reuters

Joseph Schooling in the 100m butterfly semi-finals on Aug 11, 2016. Photo: Reuters

RIO DE JANERIO – Joseph Schooling's heart is set on gold, declaring that it is the only medal he wants to win in the 100m final at the Rio Olympics.

The 21-year-old will enter the final on Saturday morning (Aug 13, Singapore time) as the fastest qualifier. On Friday, he set a new Asian and national record of 50.83s, also the world’s fastest time in the event this year. 

Still, Schooling is aware that his job is not done yet.

He told TODAY after his race: “I’m all about winning medals and trying to win. It’s great to be the first to make top eight, but we have a lot of young talent coming up, and I’m sure a lot of people in the future from Singapore can make top eight.

“You shouldn’t only be looking at making top eight, you should be looking at winning medals and winning gold medals. So that’s what I’m trying to set.

“(Yes) that’s another benchmark (the new Asian record). (But) it’s all about winning the gold medal, I don’t care about breaking the world record and getting a silver or bronze, so I still lost. It’s all about winning.”

But Schooling will have to fend off three of the world's best swimmers in the event: Michael Phelps, who finished fifth fastest with his time of 51.58s even though he had just competed in the 200m individual medley final moments earlier and won his 22nd career Olympics gold medal; Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh (51.57); and South Africa’s Chad le Clos (51.43).

Schooling described himself as “feeling fine”, and while his time is a good confidence booster, it is nothing more than that.

“It’s a good confidence booster but don’t really mean anything, just means eight people go through and I’m one of them and I’m lucky to do that,” he said.

Joseph Schooling. Photo: Reuters

National swimming head coach Sergio Lopez said that Saturday’s race will not be about the pursuit of world or Olympic records.  “I think tomorrow is not so much about the time, it’s going to be about execution,” he told TODAY.  

“Joe’s proven that he can swim a night race, many people are not able to swim at night, you see a lot of medallists from the last Olympics, world championships not even qualifying.

“If he can execute like today, he’s in the race, he has a big chance. The second guy was six-tenths behind him, it’ll be exciting.”

But the Spaniard, himself a former Olympic bronze medalist, will not be delivering any special pep talk to Schooling on Saturday. He will just remind his young charge of the fundamentals before the latter embarks on the task of delivering Singapore’s first ever medal in swimming.

“The only thing I know, I’ve talked to him about it, is to just take one step at a time,” he said.

“The most important thing is that he keeps his mind fresh, he doesn’t get over-excited, he executes what he needs to do like this morning.

“He would have realised a couple things so he will try to change before the night. Whatever he can see he didn’t do 100 per cent right, hopefully he can change before tomorrow. That’s the best that you can do.”

Meanwhile, Quah Zheng Wen (pictured above; Photo: Reuters) was feeling satisfied with his performances and times in the 100m fly, which he felt made up for the disappointment of missing out on the 200m butterfly final earlier this week by just 0.08sec.

Said the 19-year-old who had clocked a new personal best of 52.08sec in the heats, and then a 52.26sec in the semis to finish 15th overall: “It was going pretty well till the 75 metres but I just couldn’t finish, I didn’t really have a good start, messed up my dive a little bit, just had a bad race, can’t be helped.

“It’s really just the best that you can be at that point in time, it’s not really something that a lot of people can train for. You could say it’s experience, or the mental state and how you handle the environment around you. It’s just different being at the Olympics compared to a lot of the other meets. It’s pretty wild.”

When asked to rate his Olympic campaign, which is his second Olympics outing, Quah, who along with Schooling, were the only ones to meet the A qualifying times for their events, said: “(On the whole) I think I did pretty well.

“I came out 10th in the 200 fly and might be 15th for 100m fly which wasn’t really my main event so that was pretty nice.

“I wish I could have done things a little bit better but things like that happen and I know I could be a lot better so we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

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