Khelan eyes Olympic Games

Jai Narayan College’s star swimmer Grace Elizabeth Khelan has set her goal to participate at the Olympic Games in future.

The 14-year-old set four new records at the National Schools Age Group Championship last weekend in Suva.

Khelan broke the record in the women’s (13-14 year olds) 50m freestyle, 50m butterfly, 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.

She set a new time of 30.40s and 1:08.62 in the women’s 14-year-olds 50m and 100m butterfly event, respectively. The previous 100m buttlerfy record was set by Courtney Pene in 2008.

She clocked a new time of 59.98 in the 100m freestyle; Rosemarie Rova held the previous record of 1:00.82 in 2017. Her record time in the 50m freestyle was 26.91s to surpass Yolani Blake’s time of 28.36s set in 2014.

Khelan started swimming seven years ago with the Babale swim club before moving to Orca.

“It’s a pleasure to swim for JNC. It would be an eye-opener for other students who would like to swim,” the Year 9 student said.

“My aim was to put my name down in the record books.

“My end goal is to represent Fiji at the Olympic Games.”

“I’d like to thank my parents for helping me especially my mother for always waking me up every morning and bringing me to the pool.”

She also credited her grandparents and cousins for their support.

Khelan hails from Taveuni and shares maternal links to Visama, Nakelo, Tailevu.

“The preparation for nationals was affected for two days due to the water outage. I missed two training days and I was upset that I did not achieve a personal best time in most of my events but I’m glad I broke the record.

“I’m encouraging everyone to find a club and come and enjoy swimming.”

Coach and mother Sereana Heritage was impressed with her daughter’s performance. She added Khelan has been a standout winning gold at the New Zealand Schools nationals competition.

“With consistency and perseverance, we know Grace has got a long way ahead of her,” Heritage said.

“Discipline is key, and she’s somebody that puts her hat into it, even though she’s still a child. But when it comes to competition, she puts on her mind and hard work to it.”

JNC swimmers shine

Despite only having a five-member team, the JNC swimmers were among the top five in the women’s medal tally.

The team scooped 8 gold, one silver and one bronze medal.

Heritage said she hopes to rope in more students in future school comeptitions.

“The Bigger dream is to hopefully have most of the parents get their children to swim. We have a roll of more than a thousand. It’s a work in progress, and hopefully next year we’ll come back with double the numbers or even triple.”