Ingram leads kiwi swimming charge in Singapore

Beijing Olympian Melissa Ingram is chasing further success when the FINA World Cup swim series moves to Singapore this weekend.

Ingram, a member of Swimming New Zealand’s High Performance Centre, has moved to fifth overall on the women’s World Cup rankings with NZ$170,000 up for grabs for all swimmers at each Wold Cup short course meet and a further $600,000 to be distributed among the top three male and female swimmers at the end of the seven-meet series.

She leads a 14-strong New Zealand contingent to compete in Singapore, hoping to continue on the run of success achieved at the Sydney World Cup last weekend. Ingram enjoyed two wins and a second with two national open records.

“Melissa is in very good form and will be competing in the rest of the series including the three rounds in Europe,” coach Thomas Ansorg said.

One record-breaker who won’t be in Singapore is West Auckland Aquatics swimmer Michael Jack, who has returned to complete university examinations. He produced a stunning performance to break the great Danyon Loader’s long-standing 200m freestyle short course mark. Jack swam 1:45.15 to sneak under the old time in coming second to Olympic gold medallist Osama Mellouli.

“It was a benchmark performance from Michael Jack who was also extremely impressive there.”

New Zealand swimmers enjoyed eight podium placings at Sydney from Ingram, Natalie Wiegersma, Charlotte Webby, Glenn Snyders, Matt Woodrow and Jack, with four of them swimming in Singapore.

Southland’s Wiegersma, 18, was third in the 20-0m individual medley and will be joined by her sister Joyce in Singapore with coach Jeremy Duncan.

Wellington’s Matt Woodrow, 20, who produced a stunning effort to be second behind Mellouli over 1500m in Sydney, will be looking for a repeat of his victory in this event in Singapore last year. He joins fellow SwimZone clubmates John Gatfield and Steven Kent under coach Frank Tourelle.

Webby enjoyed a breakthrough third placing over 800m freestyle in Sydney and ventures to Singapore with Dylan Dunlop-Barrett from the small Bell Block club in Taranaki under coach Sue Southgate.

Olympic coach Donna Bouzaid has six swimmers competing in Singapore including Beijing swimmers Daniel Bell and Mark Herring, fellow West Auckland Aquatics clubmates Natasha Simpson, Anneke Jenkins and Brett Newall and Kane Radford from Aquatix Rotorua.

The Singapore event completes the Africa-Oceania swing of World Cup meets and will conclude next month with meets at Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin.