2019 TOKYO OPEN
- Thursday, November 21st – Sunday, November 24th
- Tatsumi International Swimming Center, Tokyo, Japan
- LCM
- Start Lists Unavailable at this time
The 2019 Tokyo Open kicks off tomorrow, Thursday, November 21st at the Tatsumi International Swimming Center, with essentially a ‘who’s who’ of Japanese swimming ready to rumble.
Taking place in long course meters, the men’s competition is set to see the likes reigning short course 200 fly World Record holder and two-time World Champion Daiya Seto, Kosuke Hagino, Katsumi Nakamura, Ryosuke Irie, Naito Ehara, Keita Sunama, Yasuhiro Koseki, Ippei Watanabe and Shinri Shioura.
For the women, Yui Ohashi is expected to hit the Tatsumi waters, straight off altitude training camp in Spain. Tomoi Aoki, Rika Omoto, Chihiro Igarashi, Rio Shirai, Suzuka Hasegawa, and Kanako Watanabe are also entered in the 4-day event.
But a special guest will be inserted into the mix in the form of long course 200m fly World Record holder Krisof Milak. The Hungarian has been in Japan as of late, training alongside Rio silver medalist in the event, Masato Sakai.
Sakai had shoulder cyst surgery in 2018 and has been slowly battling back to form ever since. The 24-year-old busted out his fastest 200m fly time in 2 years while competing at the FINA Champions Series event. There in Budapest, the man fired off a time of 1:55.04 to take silver behind Milak.
Most recently at the Japanese Amateur Championships last weekend, Sakai took the 200m fly gold in a time of 1:57.82.
Sakai has told Asian media his goal of training with Milak temporarily is simply to learn from the best, similar to how Olympic finalist Rikako Ikee joined Sarah Sjostrom in Turkey last year.
But besides both Sakai and Seto racing Milak in the fly events, Seto will also be contesting the IM races against his longtime domestic rival Hagino. The pair haven’t raced one another since early spring, after which Hagino took a hiatus for mental and physical health reasons.
The 400m IM Olympic champion has since been chipping away at his comeback, including racing at the World Cup Tokyo, the Japanese National Sports Festival, as well as the aforementioned Amateur Championships last weekend, where he notched his name to the Japanese National Team roster at the 11th hour.
I guess this means Seto’s ISL debut will just be in Vegas?
Just looking back on worlds, it’s astounding how he went 1:50.7. His turns, start, and breakouts are all terrible. Those things are the reason Phelps was 1:51.5. He’s just so damn fast on top of the water. Project 1:49 is underway. I can’t stop him.
He intentionally conserved energy on the turns and underwaters which seemed to aid him in the overall outcome of the race as he appeared to not get as tired the last 50. I do agree they could be faster if he practiced them
Lol I remember watching the semi, and he just casually went a 1:52.96. I was so scared because it looked so easy, he looked like he wasn’t even trying.
Yep, it was kinda scary. Also, in a Hungarian interview after the semi he said that the last 50 stung a bit and that he wasn’t thinking about the WR. It was obvious that he wanted it, but I think the 1.50 was a surprise for him too. He wants to swim ‘slightly better’ 400 and 200 frees this weekend, which is the Milak way to say that he wants to scare the specialists finally 🙂 He should learn English already, his interviews are always funny
Should be a good race, nice to see the event in good shape post-Phelps, interested to see what kind of time Urlando can throw down next year
We could have seen this battle at the isl european derby in scm this weekend but this will do. Shame we couldn’t see both the lcm battle and scm battle between the the lcm wr holder and scm wr holder in the 200 fly.