Olympic long-distance tanker Ryan Arabejo eclipsed his own national record Sunday at the 2009 USA Swimming Speedo Championships Series-Southern Zone Sectional in Gainesville, Florida to bolster the Philippines’ Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) chances in Laos this year.

The 18-year-old Arabejo, who competed in the Beijing Olympics last year, swam three minutes and 57.25sec in the men’s 400m freestyle to erase his own record of 3:58.51 he made at the Janet Evans International Championships in the United States two years ago.

His time also surpassed the current SEAG mark of Thailand’s Torlap Sethsothon, who clocked 3:57.34 in the 1995 edition also in Thailand.

It was the fourth national and SEAG record broken since Miguel Molina erased three marks at the Japan Open in China last May.

“He has been at summer camp, training very hard,” said Philippine Amateur Swimming Association president Mark Joseph of Arabejo, who was under scholarship at Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida since last year.

Arabejo’s feat intensified the RP swimming team’s SEAG preparations, which hopes to improve its seven-gold haul in the previous edition in Thailand.

“Our SEAG preparation drive for 2009, which began the day after the 2005 Manila SEAG, is going full steam ahead. And we are ignoring the predictions of doom, and despite lack of funding,” Joseph said.

Arabejo swims in his pet event, the men’s 1500m, Monday and Joseph is optimistic of another national record.

The young tanker has been silently making waves in the international scene after getting discovered at the 2005 Palarong Pambansa in Naga City, where he harvested five gold medals and became the Games’ most bemedalled athlete in the high school division.