The Japanese Swimming Federation (JASF) has released the selection criteria for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games set to be hosted in Los Angeles, California and the qualifying times are indeed tough.
To determine the nation’s qualification times for each event, the federation looked at the 8th-place finishing times across the past four World Championships and the 2024 Olympic Games and compared them to the World Aquatics ‘A’ benchmarks for LA2028. Whatever time was fastest among these was slotted as Japan’s QT.
According to the JASF, the standards are truly meant to select those Japanese swimmers most likely to medal in each event, as opposed to just representing the nation by getting up on the blocks in the Olympics.
There are only two men’s events where the Japanese QT equals the ‘A’ cut – 100m breast and 400m IM. On the women’s side, the 100m back, 100m breast, 200m breast, 200m IM and 400m IM equal the ‘A’ cuts.
There are several instances where the JASF standard is faster than the reigning Japanese national record.
| Event | JPN QT | JPN Record |
| Men’s 100m free | 47.64 | 47.85 |
| Men’s 800m free | 7:44.59 | 7:48.34 |
| Men’s 1500m free | 14:45.59 | 14:50.18 |
| Men’s 100m fly | 50.88 | 50.81 |
| Women’s 400m free | 4:03.83 | 4:05.19 |
| Women’s 800m free | 8:22.20 | 8:23.68 |
The sole qualifying competition at which swimmers can achieve these time standards is the 2028 Japanese Championships, which historically have taken place in March or April.
Japan had a disappointing showing at the 2024 Olympic Games, where Tomoyuki Matsushita represented the nation’s sole medalist after having earned silver in the men’s 400m IM.
That was after Japan was also on the lackluster end of the spectrum at the home-hosted 2020 Olympics. There in Tokyo, only Yui Ohashi (gold in 200m IM, gold in 400m IM) and Tomoru Honda (silver in 200m fly) took home hardware.
Comparison of Japanese Qualification Times & World Aquatics ‘A’ Cuts for LA2028
| JPN Men | ‘A’ Men | Event | ‘A’ Women | JPN Women |
| 21.64 | 21.69 | 50m Free | 24.56 | 24.39 |
| 47.64 | 47.86 | 100m Free | 53.60 | 53.04 |
| 1:45.60 | 1:45.83 | 200m Free | 1:56.43 | 1:56.03 |
| 3:44.33 | 3:45.46 | 400m Free | 4:06.27 | 4:03.83 |
| 7:44.59 | 7:47.04 | 800m Free | 8:26.71 | 8:22.20 |
| 14:45.59 | 14:51.62 | 1500m Free | 16:08.65 | 16:01.95 |
| 52.57 | 53.00 | 100m Back | 59.49 | 59.49 |
| 1:55.64 | 1:56.05 | 200m Back | 2:08.95 | 2:08.79 |
| 59.27 | 59.27 | 100m Breast | 1:06.10 | 1:06.10 |
| 2:09.32 | 2:09.35 | 200m Breast | 2:23.49 | 2:23.49 |
| 50.88 | 51.06 | 100m Fly | 57.38 | 56.93 |
| 1:54.62 | 1:54.69 | 200m Fly | 2:08.15 | 2:07.53 |
| 1:57.23 | 1:57.54 | 200m IM | 2:09.90 | 2:09.90 |
| 4:11.52 | 4:11.52 | 400m IM | 4:37.33 | 4:37.33 |
That’s dumb.
They failed at Fukuoka and Paris using the exact same qualifying standards.
Even in Singapore, although they did not win gold, I felt they did better than Paris because, instead of adding time from Nationals, a lot of swimmers went faster at Worlds.
I don’t get why the JSF won’t commit to trying out a ‘looser’ qualifying standard for just this Olympic cycle and see if the results were better in LA than in Paris.
While the stiffer qualification times have some benefits, I do think Japan currently needs to get more of its swimmers accustomed to the grind and pressure of an international meet. Most of them can’t do what they did at Nationals where… Read more »
I don’t buy this nonsense about ‘tourists’ and ‘making up the numbers’. If you meet the ‘A’ standard and you finish one or two in your country you should have the right to compete at the Olympics. Swimming isn’t a lucrative sport. The Olympics is the reward you get for being a bloody good swimmer after years of hard work. Japan has been a qualifier at every recent FIFA World Cup. They have zero chance of winning it but they send a team anyway and that’s how it should be because they’ve earned the right. Why do so many swimming federations have this obsession about only sending likely medallists or finalists? If only the freakishly talented are deemed worthy of… Read more »
Different countries do things in different way. I guess that maybe least 10-15 countries use this model in one way or another including Australia.
For some meets the federations have made the National team trips partially self funded, I think that have happened to South Africa a few times.
This tings happens to other sports as well, it is not just swimming.
This must be so dispiriting for young swimmers..the Olympics must seem so out of reach.
I believe these standards are created based on the world rankings The eighth fastest times from the previous year are the qualifying times. Yes. Ridiculous! They have this selection meet so early, and do not consider some of the achieved times in this competition are doable in 4-5 months by training camps (they do that often). One hardest example was So Ogata missing the Olympic spot in 200 IM by .01 in March for the Olympics in August.
Some of these times are exponentially ridiculous. Four of the qualifying times are equal to or faster than Japanese national record
Is Japan really this poor?
Is there any data on how this works out for countries? I feel like GB used to have similarly crazy standards, but I might be mixing them up with Germany or something.
Germany used to be notorious for it.
GB has stiff standards, but it’s mostly so that they can hand-select the team using ‘discretionary’ standards.
We could look into making some data (maybe after NCAAs). Trying to conceptualize how we’d make that data meaningful given the natural variability in success between years of countries that aren’t the USA and Australia…hard to find the “control.” Germany has definitely been doing better since they softened standards, but hard to draw even a correlation let alone a causation.
Yeah it’d be super noisy, mostly because countries with these kinds of standards wouldn’t have very many athletes to look at “before” relaxing them. (And like you said, most non US/AUS teams only ever have a handful of medalists at best anyway.)
I don’t buy much into the “it’s better to send whoever you can to gain ‘international experience’ for development purposes” deal but my other hunch is sending a team of 2 is way dumber. It’s the “your hometown paper will say you went to Olympic Trials” thing, even a semifinalist would prolly get a blurb for whatever Japanese town that person’s from!
Dear Braden,
in the last years we didn’t soften the standards – and I think that was the better way.
Of course we couldn’t send every relay to championships, but on the other side there were more places in the top 16 than in the years after Steffen/ Biedermann etc.
For me it’s more fun to watch in the last years, especially in the long distance events!
And by the way: Thank you all for your daily work!
After reading the headline and the article I expected the Japanese QT times to be even faster.
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“To determine the nation’s qualification times for each event, the federation looked at the 8th-place finishing times across the past four World Championships and the 2024 Olympic Games and compared them to the World Aquatics ‘A’ benchmarks for LA2028. Whatever time was fastest among these was slotted as Japan’s QT.”
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How could it be that even a single qualifying time equaled the WA A-cut, how did they then establish the WA A-cuts?
From the world aquatics website. I hope this will be helpful.
https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/LA28/SWM-LA28-Qualification-System.pdf
I was thinking that if they used 8th place times, how could it be that not ALL of their cuts are faster than the WA A-cuts?
In the past WA specified what they used for the A-cut such as 14th place from prior Olympics as long as it was not slower than any previous Olympic cut. Now they just say that it is based on recent results from Olympics and World Championships (which are much faster than under the old system).