2021 TOKYO OPEN
- Saturday, February 20th & Sunday, February 21st
- Tokyo Tatsumi International Swimming Centre
- LCM (50m)
- Results (in Japanese)
The 2021 Tokyo Open is set to begin tomorrow at the Tatsumi International Swimming Centre. This non-selection meet serves as another stepping stone along the path toward April’s Japan Swim, the sole Olympic-qualifying opportunity for the nation’s swimmers.
Among those set to compete over the weekend is two-time 2019 world champion Daiya Seto. The 26-year-old, who spent the latter half of 2019 under a Japanese Swimming Federation (JASF)-dealt suspension, has already raced once this year. He most recently competed at the 2021 Japan Open earlier this month, posting a 400m IM time of 4:12.57 among his performances.
Here at this Tokyo Open, Seto is slated to take on both IM events, as well as the 200m fly.
After the aforementioned Japan Open, Seto stated of his 4IM performance, “Condition-wise, because this is my first competition in a while, I’ve not been perfectly tuned up. But this is a new start and I wanted to do as best as I can today. I’m not satisfied with my time of 4:12 but I want to whip myself to work harder every single day.”
We’ll see how his times compare to that earlier competition when all is said and done in Tokyo this weekend.
Rikako Ikee is another key competitor to watch at this Tokyo Open. The 20-year-old leukemia survivor is entered in the 50m and 100m butterfly, marking her first time competing in this discipline since making her way back into competition after having been released from the hospital.
Ikee owns the Japanese national records in the 50 and 100m fly with her times of 25.11 and 56.08, respectively.