2022 KONAMI OPEN
- February 19th & February 20th
- Tatsumi International Swimming Centre
- LCM (50m)
- Results
The 2022 Konami Open quietly wrapped up over the weekend in Tokyo, with the competition at a subdued level due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, 2016 Olympic champion Daiya Seto was among the racers, with this two-day meet actually representing his first race back after having contracted COVID last month, rendering him out of the Kitajima Cup.
The 27-year-old took on a light schedule of just his signature 400m IM event, competing in only the prelims race at that. The 200m fly world record holder logged a time of 4:15.86, a solid effort considering he had been training in a hotel up until recently while under quarantine.
On his result here, Seto stated it was ‘neither good nor bad’, with his focus fiercely on Japan’s Competition Selection Met slated for March. The meet represents the sole qualification opportunity for the newly-inserted 2022 FINA World Aquatics Championships on the books for June/July.
Additional notes from this Konami Open included Katsumi Nakamura snagging the 50m free gold in 22.13 while Naito Ehara came out on top of the men’s 200m free in 1:47.12.
Two junior records were broken, including Mio Narita doing some damage in the women’s 400m IM. At just 15 years of age, Narita logged a mark of 4:40.86 to establish a new National Junior High School Record. That sliced .02 off of the 4:40.88 Narita put up at the 2021 Japan Open last June.
For perspective, Narita’s performance would rank her as the 11th fastest American 15-16-year-old woman of all time.
Pretty impressive considering it is only 6 seconds off the Gold medal winning time at the Tokyo Olympics and he’s just back from Covid. Did the hotel even have a pool he could swim at or was he training in his room with stretch cords? I am confident he’ll swim a Worlds qualifying time by March.