Toh Wei Soong took his second bronze in two nights at the Nagoya City General Gymnasium on Tuesday (20 October), touching third in the men’s 100m freestyle S7 in 1min 5.33sec. Team Singapore’s Aichi-Nagoya campaign now has two medals, both his, and the 28-year-old has three titles to defend before the Games close on Saturday.
China’s Zhang Yilong won in 1:03.66, with young Uzbek Sardor Bakhtiyorov second in 1:04.91, and Toh took the last place on the podium.
A sprinter in a new field
The 100m freestyle was Toh’s event long before this final. He won it at the 2018 Games in Jakarta, then lost the chance to defend it when Hangzhou left the event off its programme. He came to Nagoya as the only Asian swimmer in last year’s eight-man World Para Swimming Championships final, where he finished fifth, and with ASEAN Para Games gold from January.
What he met on Tuesday was a final full of faces he had never raced. Toh, poolside afterwards: “Many of these Chinese swimmers are new. This is my first time racing against many of them, and that’s the nature of para sport. Sometimes you never know what you are going to face going into major Games.”
The 400m that opened the account
Monday’s bronze came from the opposite end of Toh’s range. The 400m freestyle S7 went straight to a final, and he raced it like a sprinter, leading the field for the first three laps before Ernie Gawilan of the Philippines and Zhang reeled him in.
Gawilan, a close friend and the Hangzhou champion, won in 4:56.72. Zhang took silver in 5:01.36 and Toh held third in 5:24.23, a step down from the silver he won over the distance three years ago. His plan was to hang loose, go out at a good pace and try to come back faster. “The great thing about going straight into the final is that it’s a sprinter’s dream. You just gamble everything on the final.”
Nine medals and counting
That 400m bronze was his eighth Asian Para Games medal, and he called it his lucky number eight. He opened Singapore’s account in Hangzhou too, on the way to golds in the 50m freestyle, 50m butterfly and 100m backstroke S7. Jakarta 2018 gave him two golds and a bronze. Aichi-Nagoya is his fourth Games; he first swam at the event in 2014, aged 16.
The two-time Paralympian also won 50m freestyle S7 silver at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games this year. Singapore’s tally in Japan stands at no golds, no silvers and two bronzes, from 20 athletes across nine sports.
Wong’s near miss, and what comes next
Teammate Wong Zhi Wei finished fourth in the 400m freestyle S13 in a national record of 4:38.19, inside the 4:38.97 qualifying standard for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympics. He was fourth again in the 100m breaststroke SB13, three-hundredths of a second behind Iran’s Abadi Karimi Jahan for bronze.
Toh defends his 50m butterfly, 100m backstroke and 50m freestyle S7 titles over the next three days.
