The Singapore men's 4x100m freestyle relay team had looked set to retain their SEA Games title after finishing first in 3min 17.19sec, ahead of Malaysia (3:20.13) and hosts Vietnam (3:21.81) at the My Dinh Water Sports Palace on Saturday (May 14).

But midway through their post-race interviews, the Republic's quartet of Joseph Schooling, Mikkel Lee, Quah Zheng Wen and Jonathan Tan received a rude shock when they were told that they had been disqualified. They were then ushered away.