83rd CHIBA PREFECTURE SWIMMING COMPETITION
- Sunday, September 13th
- Chiba International Swimming Pool
- LCM (50m)
- Results (in Japanese)
Japan’s prefecture-by-prefecture competitions are wrapping up this month, with the 83rd Chiba meet taking place today about 30 minutes outside next year’s Summer Olympic Games host city of Tokyo.
Among the age groupers competing at the Chiba International Swimming Pool was 2019 World Championships silver medalist Katsuhiro (Katsuo) Matsumoto. The competition marked the 23-year-old’s first time racing since he was cleared of any wrongdoing associated with a positive doping test.
As we reported last month, Matsumoto’s traces of clenbuterol detected in an out-of-competition test in February of this year while the swimmer was in Mexico were attributed to tainted meat. It was determined that ‘the infringing substance was unintentionally ingested in meals’, thus rendering Matsumoto not in violation of anti-doping rules. You can read our full report here.
Flash forward to today and Matsumoto took on the men’s 400m free events and 100m fly races, the latter of which is an off-event for the freestyle ace. Both represent his first races in nearly 6 months.
In the 400m free, Matsumoto got his hand on the wall first in a time of 3:52.95. The time falls within about 2 seconds from his personal best, the 3:50.92 logged at the 2019 Japan Swim. Matsumoto owns the Japanese national record in the short course version of this 4free event, having registered a speedy 3:37.94 at another Chiba meet in January of this year.
Matsumoto’s 100m fly time here 52.49 marks a huge personal best. Although the man had contested this event way back at the 2014 Junior Pan Pacific Championships, he produced a time of 56.06 as a 17-year-old, rarely racing it since.
Tonight, splitting 24.61/27.88, Matsumoto produced a new personal best and also checks-in among his nation’s fastest-ever performers in slot #26. His time would have rendered him in the final of last year’s Japan Swim, for perspective.
Of his trying the fly on for size, Matsumoto said post-race, “If you’re in better shape outside of freestyle, you’ll be more focused on swimming as a whole. I think I’ll try to aim at the butterfly a little bit.”
Additional winners on the night included Yuno Ito taking the women’s 400m free by over 13 seconds, gathering a time of 4:13.67.
Miho Teramura snagged gold in both the 50m breast and 200m IM, topping the women’s fields in times of 31.93 and 2:13.04, respectively. Of note, Teramura will be joining Matsumoto as members of the International Swimming League (ISL) squad of Tokyo Frog Kings for season 2.
Finally, Yui Yamane hit a 100m fly time of 1:00.30, as well as a 100m free time of 56.51 to reap double gold on the night.
