Japanese Women Break Games, National Records In 400 Medley Relay

SWIMMING AT THE 2018 ASIAN GAMES

• August 19th-24th, 2018
• Jakarta, Indonesia
• Schedule & Results

The Japanese foursome of Natsumi Sakai, Satomi Suzuki, Rikako Ikee and Tomomi Aoki combined to break both the Asian Games and Japanese National Records in the women’s 400 medley relay, winning an emphatic gold at the Games in Jakarta.

They put up a time of 3:54.73, breaking their National Record of 3:55.03 set recently at the Pan Pacific Championships, and shatter China’s previous Games Record of 3:57.80 from 2010. Three of the same four swimmers had set that Japanese mark at Pan Pacs less than two weeks ago, which broke the previous record of 3:55.73 set at the 2012 Olympic Games. The only difference was that they used Suzuki on breaststroke instead of Reona Aoki.

Japanese Record Split Comparison

In a comparison of the splits from the two Japanese Records, Sakai, Ikee and Tomomi Aoki were all a bit slower than Pan Pacs, but Suzuki was a whopping 1.41 seconds quicker than Reona Aoki on breaststroke with a 1:05.43 leg to get them under the record by three-tenths.

Asian Games Record Split Comparison

Comparing their swim with the old Asian Games Record, Suzuki and Ikee combined to be 3.61 seconds faster over the middle 200 as they torched the record by just over three seconds.

China touched 2nd in 3:59.51, and Korea was 3rd in 4:02.33, but both teams were disqualified shortly after the race. That bumped Hong Kong (4:03.15) up to silver and Singapore (4:09.65) up to bronze after initially thinking they were 4th and 5th.