The Japanese Swimming Federation is in a bit of an odd position at the moment, with much of their swimming (and national) infrastructure undergoing great repair. However, they have done a near-heroic job of maintaining a course for the 2011 Shanghai World Championships, which included a shockingly fast, and wildly successful, modified National Championships/Charity meet 2 weeks ago.
Today, they announced their roster for the World Championships, which will include 22 swimmers. The most anticipated swim will be a re-match in the 200 breaststroke of Kosuke Kitajima and Naoya Tomia. The latter upset the former at the National Championships in setting a world-best time of 2:08.25. As expected, the 3rd-place swimmer in that event (who is also 3rd-best in the world this year) Otsuka Kazuki was disappointingly left off.
Full Trials Results (in English).
Japan’s selection for Shanghai (as of April 12, 2011)
Men:
Takuro Fujii
Yosuke Miyamoto
Junya Koga
Ryosuke Irie
Kazuki Watanabe
Kosuke Kitajima
Naoya Tomita
Ryo Tateishi
Takeshi Matsuda
Ryusuke Skata
Yuya Horihata
Women:
Yayoi Matsumoto
Haruka Ueda
Hanae Ito
Natsuki Hasegawa
Misaki Yamaguchi
Aya Terakawa
Shiho Sakai
Satomi Suzuki
Rie Kaneto
Yuka Kato
Natsumi Hoshi
I too can see both sides and it does give college swimmers more opportunity but I don’t think you necessarily get the fastest swimmers. I like the idea of having to get an A cut as the first hurdle and moving on from there. If their is no A cut, maybe look at recent history to fill out the spot. The whole point is to get the fastest swimmers, especially for the relay spots.
I’m still amazed that the US decides its team the year before. Also, don’t some of the countries require the swim to meet the FINA time standards?
I’m sure the justification is the college season-it’d be hard to compete the professional swimmers against the college swimmers at a trial. I see value to both systems-it gives our athletes more flexibility in their peaks and tapers in the leadup to the World Champs, but it would be nice to make a few changes (like swap Missy Franklin and Liz Pelton on the backstrokes) based on what we’ve learned in the last 9 months.
Most countries make sort of their own rules (though they must be more limiting than the FINA time standards) that give them some flexibility in rosters. Rules such as requiring a swimmer to swim an A cut at the trial to automatically qualify, and then… Read more »
Coming from a very casual swimfan’s perspective, if you’re bolding the big names that stand out here, I’ve definitely heard of these Japanese swimmers (whereas names like Yosuke Miyamoto doesn’t quite ring a bell for me):
Junya Koga
Takeshi Matsuda
Haruka Ueda
Hanae Ito
Rie Kaneto
Miyamoto should ring a bell for many fans in the near future-he’s got the number 3 1500 time in the world right now.
Those swimmers you highlighted are all quite good. Aside from Matsuda (who I’ve gone back and highlighted), none of them appear to be medal contenders this year. The Japanese team is becoming a bit like the American or Australian team (though not quite the same depth) where almost everyone who can earn a roster spot for World’s is a very good swimmer.
why are some names bolded?
That was me…I bolded the big names that would stand out. I think that in lists like this, with names that are of unfamiliar construction to our typical audience, the tendency exists to sort of glaze over them. I’ll go back and indicate this in the article, thanks for pointing it out.