Singapore's Joseph Schooling celebrates after winning the men's 100-meter butterfly swimming final at the 17th ...
On Wednesday evening, Majulah Singapura played in Incheon, South Korea for the first time - because Joseph Schooling really wanted it to.
Just how badly did the Singaporean swim prodigy want to win the Asian Games 100m butterfly event? Enough to kill, it seems.
'I saw that I was ahead, but I was tightening up at the end,' said Schooling. 'Still, if someone wanted to overtake me, if someone wanted to run me down... they were going to have to die trying.'
In the end, no one was hurt, and the 19-year-old claimed Singapore's first gold medal of the Asiad in a new Games record of 51.76 seconds.
Schooling is now Singapore's first Asian Games men's swimming champion in 32 years, since legend Ang Peng Siong won the 100m freestyle in New Delhi, India in 1982.
But it was also the closest of shaves, with China's Li Zhuhao taking silver in 51.91 seconds while Hirofumi Ikebata of Japan finished third in 52.08 seconds.
At the halfway turn, Schooling was in second place. His kick off the wall propelled him to the front of the pack, but 15-year-old Li caught up and threatened to dash his dream - at least until the Singaporean dug deep and powered home in the last 25 metres.
'During the race, I just wanted to go pretty hard, to stick with them and hold on in the last 50,' Schooling reflected at a press conference. '(Li) was coming in pretty hard on me so I tried to hold him off.'
'I died a little bit at the end but still managed to touch the wall first,' he added.
He said that going into the race, he was confident of winning, despite less-than-ideal preparations for the Games.
'I just enrolled at the University of Texas, so I've been training once a day for the past four weeks. It's not much,' Schooling explained. 'I tried to prepare for this meet as best I could, but that is no way close to what I will be doing for future big meets like this.'
He added: 'On a scale of one to 10, I would say my preparation for this event is a five, or 5.5... maybe a weak six.'
On Sunday, Schooling delivered Singapore's first Asian Games men's swimming medal in 24 years when he took bronze in the 200m butterfly.
'It's always good breaking records and surpassing milestones,' he said. 'It's one of the big things I think about before practice every day: wanting to reach higher heights and to do something special.'
'I'm honoured I could do that for my country.'
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