17-Yr-Old Murasa Impresses Again With In-Season 1:45.84 LCM 200 Free

2025 KOSUKE KITAJIMA CUP

• Friday, January 24th – Sunday, January 26th
• Tokyo Aquatics Center, Tokyo, Japan
• LCM (50m)
• SwimSwam Preview
• Results

The 2025 Kosuke Kitajima Cup kicked off from the Tokyo Aquatics Center, the site of swimming action at the 2020 Olympic Games. The 3-day competition represents one of three annual ‘K’ meets, with both the annual Konami Open and Kirara Cup taking place next month.

This competition represents a qualifying opportunity for swimmers to etch their names onto the Japanese roster for this year’s World Championships. The primary qualification meet is the Japan Swim slated for April.

New for the Kosuke Kitajima Cup is the fact that 50m distances of each discipline will be held as a three-round knockout competition with 10 competitors narrowed down to 4 and then finally a head-to-head final battle.

We reported earlier how there was a mishap with the backstroke flags during the final of the women’s 400m IM. The flags were set at 2.5m instead of 5m away from the wall, resulting in the competition miscounting their strokes and, in some cases, banging their heads into the wall. This event will be re-run tomorrow.

18-year-old Olympic finalist Mio Narita demonstrated her versatility, getting to the wall first in the women’s 200m back final.

With no flag mishaps, Narita touched in a time of 2:09.54 to establish a new meet record. She opened in 1:04.07 and closed in 1:05.47 to score the sole time of the field under 2:13.

Waka Kobori was next in 2:13.42 while Suzuki Kanto rounded out the podium in 2:14.23.

As for Narita, the IM specialist’s result checks in as a new lifetime best, slicing .07 off her previous PB of 2:09.67 registered at the 2022 Junior Pan Pacific Championships.

17-year-0ld Tatsuya Murasa made some noise in the men’s 200m free, topping the podium in a super solid in-season effort of 1:45.84.

Opening in 51.22 and bringing it home in 54.62, Chukyo University’s Murasa beat the field by well over a second. The next-closest competitor was Konosuke Yanagimoto who touched in 1:47.04 while Takumi Mori bagged bronze in 1:47.97.

As for Murasa, the teen’s time was just off the 1:45.72 Japanese High School Record he notched at last November’s Japan Open. That performance rendered the rising star as Japan’s 4th-fastest male performer in history.

In the aforementioned skins races, the women’s and men’s 50m fly were on show tonight in Tokyo.

Tennessee commit Mizuki Hirai won all 3 rounds of the women’s edition, posting 26.56 in round 1, 26.64 in round 2 and finally 26.38 in round 3 to beat Aichi Takahashi (27.60) in the head-to-head battle.

Fellow Olympian Katsuhiro Matsumoto won the men’s 50m fly skins, registering 23.42 in round 1, then 23.73 in round 2 and finally 24.19 against Naoki Mizunuma who settled for runner-up in 24.47 as his final time.

Additional Winners

• Miyu Namba topped the women’s 800m free podium in a time of 8:43.08.
• Kaito Tsujimori was too quick to catch in the men’s 1500m free, beating the field by about 23 seconds en route to clocking 15:04.76.
• The women’s 200m free saw just one competitor dip under the 2:00 threshold, courtesy of 22-year-old Olympian Nagisa Ikemoto who hit 1:59.11.
• Kato Katomi got the edge over Reona Aoki in the women’s 100m breaststroke. The former hit 1:07.26 to the latter’s 1:07.33 while Satomi Suzuki rounded out the podium also under 1:08 in 1:07.93.
• The men’s 100m breast saw 2024 Short Course World Championshps bronze medalist Yamato Fukazawa log 1:00.01 to grab the gold.
• Aichi Nishikawa beat Olympic silver medalist Tomoyuki Matsushita in the men’s 400m IM. Nishikawa produced a gold medal-worthy 4:11.70 to Matsushita’s 4:12.98.