I've Always Wanted To Be The Best Of The Best

Ong breaks 100m hurdles national record by 0.01 of a second and eyes SEA Games debut

- Kimberly Kwek

A hundredth of a second can mean so much to an athlete.

For hurdler Kerstin Ong, it meant heartbreak in 2015, when she missed out on a home debut at the SEA Games by just 0.01 of a second; she was the third-fastest Singaporean but only two were allowed to compete.

A decade later, it has brought her joy and jubilation.

At the Malaysian Open Athletics Championships on Aug 30, she clocked 13.86sec in the women's 100m hurdles, 0.01sec faster than the 13.87 national mark she had jointly held with Nur Izlyn Zaini.

After chasing the mark for a decade, Ong now holds the national record outright, fulfilling a dream that she had since she was a teenager. "It definitely means a lot to me. I've always wanted to be the best of the best Singapore hurdler since young," said the 28-year-old, who also thanked her coach Ricardo Diez from the Singapore Sports School.

Her timing at the Stadium Tuanku Syed Putra in Perlis placed her behind South Korea's Jeong Yeonjin (13.72), while Thailand's Arisa Weruwanarak took bronze in 14.00.

The result also puts her in a good position to make her long-awaited SEA Games bow, after she was included in the successful appeals list for December's SEA Games in Thailand, which the Singapore National Olympic Council issued on Aug 28.