Pan Pacs Warning Shots: Ikee Puts Up 53.47 1Free/56.50 1Fly At HS Meet

2018 Kanto High School Championship Swimming Games

• Saturday, July 21st – Monday, July 23rd
• Yokohama International Pool
• Results (in Japanese)

While competing at the 2018 Kanto High School Championship Swimming Games over July 21st – July 23rd, 18-year-old Rikako Ikee threw down impressive times across her bread-and-butter sprint free and fly events. Opting out of the splash n’ dash, Ikee took on the 100m free and 100m fly, where she easily snatched gold ahead of her competitors and did so in world-class fashion.

Already positioned 8th in the world this season with the 100m free time of 53.03 she produced at the Japan Swim back in April, Ikee cranked out another sub-54 second outing of 53.47 at Yokohama. That clocking sits among the teen’s top 5 performances and sets her up nicely as the one to beat headed into next month’s highly anticipated Asian Games. Only Asians Menghui Zhu of China and Siobhan Haughey of Hong Kong have been in Ikee’s range this year, owning season-best efforts of 53.40 and 53.86, respectively.

In terms of the upcoming Pan Pacs, Ikee’s time from the weekend would put up a fight against Simone Manuel and Mallory Comerford of America and would have finished 4th in last night’s U.S. Nationals final.

Ikee is currently sitting as the #1 100m flyer in the world right now, even ahead of Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden. Ikee rocked a monster effort of 56.23 back at the Mare Nostrum Monaco stop, a time that would have taken bronze at last year’s World Championships. At the Kanto HS meet, Ikee scorched another sub-57 time of 56.50 to prove once again she is a major player among the world’s best heading into the final 2 years of the Olympic quad.