Singaporean Shanti Pereira has broken another national record on Wednesday, 23rd August 2023 and booked her place in the 200m semi-finals at the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest.
The reigning 26-year-old Asian champion clocked 22.57 seconds to finish second in Heat Three behind Shericka Jackson, Jamaica’s defending champion whose time was just 0.06 seconds faster at 22.51s.
Shanti’s previous timing was 22.69s, a national record, which won gold at the Cambodia SEA Games in May 2023.
This is the first time that Pereira has made the semi-finals at 4 world championships.
The 200m semi-finals will happen on Friday morning Singapore time.
The top 3 from each of the 6 heats along with athletes from the rest of the field with the next six fastest times, moved on to the semi-finals,.
On Sunday, Pereira missed the cut for the 100m semi-final after clocking a time of 11.33s, finishing 4th the second heat of the event, and 31st overall.
Pereira had qualified for the world meet from 19th to 27th August as a result of her world rankings in the 100m and 200m, becoming the first Singaporean to do so since at least 2011, which was the year data started to be tracked by the Singapore Athletics national body.
Streak
Shanti has her sights set on the upcoming Asian Games in Hangzhou in September.
Her record-breaking runs started in March when she broke the national 100m record at the New Zealand Track and Field Championships.
She has since gone faster, beating her time 6 times, from 11.48s to 11.20s going on to break the 100m and 200m national records in a single weekend in Brisbane, before the SEA Games in Cambodia.
She won both the 100m and 200m golds, breaking the national and SEA Games record for the 200m race.
She has rewritten the 200m national mark three times in 2023 alone.
Her 22.69s time at the SEA Games 200m event in Cambodia was also a meet record.
She went on to claim gold in the 200m at the Mittsommernacht Athletics meet in Charlottenburg, Berlin, on 30th July with a timing of 23.32.
