Disclaimer: Dolfin Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Dolfin Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
19-year-old Shinnosuke Ishikawa is rising fast in the butterfly races – and that’s good news for Japan’s medley relay.
Ishikawa was a standout this week at the Japanese Swimming Championships, blasting a 51.11 in the 100 fly. That’s a massive swim for Ishikawa, whose previous personal best was 51.9, and who went 52.0 over the summer to tie for World University Games gold.
Ishikawa’s swim is the fastest by a Japanese swimmer since the super-suit era of 2009. And it’s not particularly close. The Japanese record is a 51.00 from Kohei Kawamoto in 2009. Since the beginning of 2010, the fastest Japanese man had been a 51.43 from Naoki Mizunuma this past April. But Ishikawa went a good three tenths faster than that this week.
In fact, Ishikawa’s individual, flat-start swim was actually faster than either relay split Mizunuma (51.76 in prelims; 51.16 in finals) put up at the World Championships. His swim represents a huge boost to Japan’s medley, which was 4th at the World Championships while losing 0.3, 1.9 and 0.6 seconds to the medal-winning teams on the fly leg.
And it’s not just speculation that Ishikawa could be faster with a relay start. He also swam on a medley relay at Japan’s championship meet this week, splitting 50.72.
Japan had the fastest non-Adam Peaty breaststroke leg of any relay in the Worlds final last year, along with the 4th-ranked free leg. Ishikawa’s split would have been 3rd among flyers, giving Japan a fighting chance at a medal in front of the home crowd at next summer’s Olympics.
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