Schooling’s time smashed the Olympic Games record of 50.58s, clocked by Phelps at Beijing 2008, who had won the 100m butterfly at the past three Olympics.
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Schooling said Phelps “is the reason why I wanted to be a better swimmer”.
Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in a statement Monday the deferment had been approved. In order to attain deferment of National Service, Singaporean athletes have to show why deferment is necessary for the athlete to be able to train and compete successfully at global competitions. However, with the help of his parents May and Colin, Schooling was allowed to defer his duties until after the Rio 2016 Olympics.
“I noticed the name sounded familiar and the announcers kept saying he was a Longhorn so I looked back through my Tinder matches and found out it was him”, she told Buzzfeed. “Age is catching up”, 60-yearold Mrs Schooling recounts the endless struggle to keep the family together as they lived over 800 miles apart.
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Schooling’s victory marked Phelps’ first defeat in the 2016 Olympic games.
Schooling was a second ahead of his idol American swimmer Michael Phelps, who finished at 51.14s jointly with South Africa’s Chad le Clos and Hungarian Laszlo Cseh.
Schooling was on Phelps’s radar after breaking NCAA collegiate and US Open butterfly records swimming for Texas, and earning world championships bronze in Russian Federation past year. Phelps is 31 and has only just retired after taking his record career haul of Olympic medals to 28, including 23 golds. Aka, the Olympian who got away.
“They did it this time”, he said, after giving his son a big hug in the airport.
“The motion will be a formal recognition of his achievements by Parliament”.
The appeal was granted since Schooling has fulfilled the necessary condition for deferment, in his case, winning the gold medal for Olympics.
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Singapore’s president, Tony Tan, also added his voice to the stream of congratulations, proudly noting that Schooling finished almost a full second ahead of three of the world’s best swimmers.
