48th ALL JAPAN JUNIOR OLYMPIC SPRING COMPETITION
- Thursday, March 26th – Monday, March 30th
- Chiba International Swimming Pool
- SCM (25m)
- Meet Central
- Results
The 48th All Japan Junior Olympic Spring Competition got underway in the Chiba prefecture, with a new National High School Record going down on the men’s side to kick things off.
Just a week after the Japan Swim, the competition that decided the nation’s roster for the prestigious Asian Games taking place later this year, Hinata Ando fired off a new school benchmark en route to winning the men’s 400m free event.
Ando stopped the clock at a super speedy result of 3:40.72 to get the job done, getting to the wall less than half a second from the rest of the pack.
National record holder Kazushi Imafuku touched next in 3:41.13 and Kazusa Kuroda rounded out the podium in 3:41.88.
As for Ando, the 17-year-old overtook the longstanding HS standard of 3:40.77, which Japanese Olympic icon Kosuke Hagino put on the books during the 2012 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup.
This is the second Hagino JPN HS record to bite the dust over the last week. On March 19th at the Japan Swim, 18-year-old Imafuku erased Hagino’s school record in the LCM 400 free. His time of 3:45.84 overtook Hagino’s time of 3:46.89 the Olympic champion put on the books in 2013, well over a decade ago.
