Capas, Tarlac—Three Fil-foreign swimmers made waves on the final day of the first Philippine National Open Swimming Championships Tuesday at the New Clark City Aquatics Center here.
This was after Fil-Kiwi Luke Gebbie, and Fil-Americans James Deiparine and Remedy Rule came up with convincing performances on the final day of the meet and earned slots to the national team seeing action in the 30th Southeast Asian Games.
Of the three, Rule took the most seats after he qualified in five of seven events where was was entered.
The 22-year-old Rule swept all of her seven events that she joined as she got slots in the 50m, 100m, 200m and 400m freestyle competitions, and the 100m and 200m butterfly seats as well.
But she was not able to clinch the top two positions in the 50-meter backstroke and butterfly events despite having finished first.
“It was good to win all my events. I’d like my times to be a little bit faster from where I am with training. I’m pretty happy how the meet went,” said Rule, a marine biology graduate at the University of Texas.
On Day 4 of the three-day meet, Rule clocked 30.53 seconds to beat Mishka Sy (31.24), missing the best time of 29.79 seconds set by Chloe Isleta this year in the women’s 50-meter backstroke.
Coming close to Jasmine Alkhaldi’s 27.27-second performance in the 50-meter butterfly was also a struggle for Rule, who took the gold in 28.41 seconds, ahead of Regina Castrillo (28.86).
Last June, Rule finished second in her heat in the 18th FINA World Championships in Korea, with a new Philippine national record time of 1:00.42, resetting Alkhaldi’s 1:01.00 record set at the 28th Southeast Asian Games in Singapore in 2015.
Rule also eclipsed Erica Totten’s 2:15.76 women’s 200m butterfly national mark to 2:12.54, then trimmed it down in May to 2:12.02. She again improved it last June to 2:11.56.
This put Filipina bet Chloe Daos in the reserve list with time of 2:18.69 after topping the 200-meter butterfly tryouts ahead of Rosalee Sta. Ana.
Gebbie showed awesome form in the men’s 50m butterfly finals and was 1/100ths of a second short of breaking the national record set by Daniel Coakley in 2009 as he took the gold 24.72 seconds.
This gave Gebbie a seat that put him in the company of Jarod Hatch, who clocked 24.75 seconds at the Santa Clara International meet in the United States.
Deiparine topped the 100 meter breaststroke finals in 1:03.56, handing him his second slot in the national squad.
With his latest win, Deiparine will be joining both the 50m and 100m breaststroke events in SEA Games.
His time allowed him to join local bet Rian Tirol in the 50m breaststroke and foreign-based swimmer Jonathan Cook in the 100m breaststroke event.
Philippine Swimming Inc. president Lani Velasco said the final list of national team members competing in the Games will be known before the end of the week.
