Sprinters Ikee & Nakamura Earn Kosuke Kitajima Cup MVP Honors

2019 KOSUKE KITAJIMA CUP

• Saturday, November 17th, 2018 & Sunday, November 18th, 2018
• Tatsumi International Swim Centre
• Tokyo, Japan
• Meet Site
• LCM
• SwimSwam Meet Preview
• Day 1 Recap
• Day 1 Results
• Day 2 Results

On top of Rikako Ikee‘s impressive 52.79 100m free National Record, day 2 of the 2019 Kosuke Kitajima Cup brought additional solid performances to the table.

High schooler Yoshida Keisuke nailed a new High School National Record yesterday in the men’s 200m freestyle and followed up with a nice victory over teammate and Olympic champion Kosuke Hagino in tonight’s 400m free.

Keisuke clocked 3:48.51 to take the Cup victory and notch a new personal best. His previous career-fastest was marked by the 3:48.68 clocked at the Youth Olympic Games for bronze. Keisuke remains #3 in the world with his effort his evening.

Hagino went into automatic mode in the 200m IM tonight, winning with a sub-2 minute mark of 1:59.04. That moves the 24-year-old into the 2nd slot in this season’s very early LCM world rankings.

Doubling up on his 50m free gold from last night, national record holder Katsumi Nakamura completed the freestyle sprint sweep with gold in the 100m this evening. Nakamura stopped the clock at 48.43 to collect just the 2nd sub-49 second time in the world this season. He holds the Japanese National Record with the 47.87 he produced in February of this year at the Konami Open.

With their impressive swims in Tokyo over the past 2 days, Ikee and Nakamura were named MVPs of the 2019 Kosuke Kitajima Cup.