Ryan Gambin swims 100m fly today

Malta’s Madeleine Scerri won the opening heat in the 100m freestyle in yesterday’s swimming programme at the Water Cube, but still failed to make it to the semi-finals.

Swimming aginst Macedonia’s Elena Popovski and Turkmenistan’s Olga Hachatryan, she easily won the heat in a new national record of 57.97 seconds. In the process, she lowered her April 2007 record she registered in Australia, by 0.14 seconds.

However only the top 16 swimmers from the seven heats booked their place for today’s finals, and unfortunately, Scerri was not one of them.

Ryan Gambin will be in action today as he takes part in the heats for the 100m butterfly.

Before leaving Malta, Gambin had made it clear that he was confident of making it to the semi-finals (last 16), especially if he could swim as fast as he could.

Gambin has already made history when he became the first Maltese to qualify for the Olympics on his own merit. He clocked 54.33 seconds for the event at the European Championships in Eindhoven, last March.