HANOI, Vietnam, December 11. THE final day of swimming competition at the Southeast Asian Games in Hanoi saw swimmers from five different nations win gold in the six events contested. Overall, Thailand dominated the swimming events with strong showings by Singapore and Malaysia.
It was Singapore that scored two gold medals today. Joscelin Yeo won her fourth individual gold taking the 50m free in 26.42 seconds, just ahead of Myanmar's Moe Thu Aung who finished second for the third time here.
The city-state's Christel Bouvron won her first gold in four tries as she came from behind to win the 200m fly decisively in 2:17.72. Third at the 100, Bouvron made her move in the next lap and at the final turn she led by a second. That lead only lengthened as she powered home, with the Philippines' Maria Gandionco second in 2:19.99.
Yesterday the Philippines won their first gold medal here and today they won their second. Miguel Molina, who already had a basketful of silver and bronze medals, won the men's 200m free in 1:52.89, more than half a second ahead of Singapore's Tan Lee Yu (Gary Tan) at 1:53.58.
Until this day, Indonesia had been shut out of gold. But Danny Utomo changed all that as he raced to a narrow, come-from-behind win in the 200m fly over Thailand's Nuk Sirisanont, who was bidding for his fifth individual gold medal. Fifth at the 100, Utomo nipped Nuk — who had led from the start — in the final three strokes to win 2:04.17 to 2:04.32. Another Indonesian, Albert Sutanto, was a close third at 2:05.03
Siow Yi Ting of Malaysia and the Bolles School won her third individual gold with a convincing five-second victory in the 400 IM, 4:54.39.
Thailand's only win on the day came in the Games' final event, the men's 400 meter medley relay. Thailand took the lead in the breaststroke leg and held on to win in 3:51.33. Sparked by Alex Lim's leadoff backstroke split of 55.71, Malaysia out-touched Singapore by a hundredth of a second to take the silver in 3:532.06.