For the second year in a row, Miki Uchida has set a Japanese record in the 50 free at the Intercollegiate Championships.
This time, the 20-year-old Uchida barely snuck under her old mark, breaking it by just a single hundredth of a second.
Uchida went 24.96 to win the event by almost half a second. That also broke her national record of 24.97 set earlier this year at the Japan Swim in April.
The young sprinter first broke that record almost exactly one year ago, at that point going 25.02 to break a 13-year-old national record.
This marks the continued rise of sprinters in Japan, a stroke point that has traditionally been the nation’s weak point. Within the last few years, the women’s 50 free record has fallen multiple times, and the men’s 50 and 100 free records have gone down. That men’s 50 free record is also the Asian record, belonging to Shinri Shioura at 21.88.
Uchida still has some work to do to get to the women’s continental record. That’s a surprisingly-ahead-of-its-time mark of 24.51 set way back in 1994 by China’s Le Jingyi.
You can find full results of Japan’s Intercollegiate Championships (in Japanese) here.
The meet continues two more days, through Sunday evening in the city of Hamamatsu, Japan.
