Rikako Ikee Swims Her Fastest 100 Freestyle Since Beating Leukemia

2022 JAPAN SWIM (JAPAN SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS)

• Thursday, April 28th – Sunday, May 1st
• Prelims at 10:00am local/Finals at 5:05pm local
• Tokyo, Japan
• LCM (50m)
• SwimSwam Preview
• Start Lists/Results
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap
• Livestream

The 2022 Japan Swim/Japanese Swimming Championships continued through day 3, with big guns Yui Ohashi, Rikako Ikee and Tomoru Honda among those collecting more hardware here in Tokyo.

For double Olympic champion Ohashi, the 26-year-old took on her bread-and-butter 200m IM event, winning the race in a time of 2:10.70. That checks in as a season-best for Ohashi, as she clocked a slower 2:11.72 at the Japanese World Championships Trials, although she had already qualified for this year’s meet in Budapest by way of her Olympic gold.

No female has been under 2:10 in this 2IM even thus far this season worldwide, setting up a potentially brutal battle to the wall at Worlds. With her result here, however, Ohsahi rockets up the world rankings from 13th to now 8th, with the Americans on the hunt today in Greensboro at the nation’s International Swimming Trials.

As for fellow Olympic medalist Honda, the 20-year-old ace rocked a time of 1:54.72 to top the men’s 200m fly field by 2 seconds.

Honda posted a morning mark of 1:55.23 before splitting 54.74/59.98 to hit a time that would rank him just outside the top 5 performers, although he already owns the rankings crown with his season-best 1:53.87 from Trials.

Another head-turner tonight was Rikako Ikee, the leukemia survivor who keeps bettering her comeback times nearly every occasion she dives in.

After already winning the 50m fly here, as well as bronze in the 200m free, the 21-year-old topped the women’s 100m free with a mark of 53.83.

Opening in 26.21 and closing in 27.62, Ikee now enters the season’s world rankings in slot #14 beating out her previous 54.01 from last month. In fact, this result represents Ikee’s best performance since having returned to racing in late 2020. In 2021 she was 53.98, so tonight shaved .15 from that outing

Additional Winners:

• The women’s 800m free saw Waka Kobori get it done for gold in 8:32.06, a season-best for the two-time 2019 World University Games gold medalist.
• Niki Takahashi took the women’s 50m back in 28.40 while it was 32-year-old ace Ryosuke Irie who grabbed the men’s top prize in 24.83
• The women’s 200m fly was a close race with Kina Hayashi getting to the wall first in 2:08.28 while Airi Mitsui was right behind in 2:08.51.
• Shui Kurokawa topped the men’s 400m free podium in 3:50.41. Of note, Olympic medalist and multi-world champion Daiya Seto was also in the race, stopping the clocking 3:56.21 for 8th place.
• The men’s 200m IM saw Sou Ogata collect the gold in 1:58.12, just .01 off the 1:58.11 he produced at the trials meet.