2025 JAPAN SWIM
- Thursday, March 20th – Sunday, March 23rd
- Tokyo Aquatics Centre
- LCM (50m)
- SwimSwam Preview #1
- SwimSwam Preview #2
- Meet Central
- Live Results
The 2025 Japan Swim kicked off today from the Tokyo Aquatics Centre with the four-day competition representing the nation’s sole qualifying opportunity for this summer’s World Championships.
Right off the bat we saw a new national record go down in the men’s 50m butterfly, courtesy of Taikan Tanaka.
After establishing himself as the top-seeded swimmer with a morning outing of 23.28, 23-year-old Tanaka turned on the jets to fire off a new lifetime best of 23.06 to grab the gold in the final.
Taikan’s result held an advantage over Olympian Katsuhiro Matsumoto who scored silver in 23.32 while Shunichi Nakao bagged the bronze in 23.42.
Tanaka’s 23.06 performance overtook the 50m fly Japanese national record of 23.13 now-retired Takeshi Kawamoto put on the books at this same competition two years ago.
Entering this competition, Taikan’s career-quickest mark rested at the 23.90 established at the Japan Open last November. That means he hacked nearly a second off that previous PB to grab the gold tonight.
As a refresher, as a deviation from past stiff time standards, the Japanese Swimming Federation (JASF) has set the qualification times the same as the World Aquatics ‘A’ cuts to make the squad for Singapore.
The men’s 50m fly ‘A’ cut stands at 23.36 so both Tanaka and Matsumoto made the grade. Additionally, Taikan now ranks 3rd in the world on the season and Matsumoto checks in as the 6th-swiftest man.
2024-2025 LCM Men 50 Fly
PONTI
22.83
| 2 | Nyls Korstanje | NED | 22.88 | 12/01 |
| 3 | Taikan TANAKA | JPN | 23.06 | 03/20 |
| 4 | Thomas Verhoeven | NED | 23.20 | 12/01 |
| 5 | Sean Niewold | NED | 23.21 | 02/15 |
After the race, Tanaka told Nikkan Sports, “I was swimming with a really good feeling from the preliminaries onwards, so I did my best, hoping for the best.”
In terms of using weightlifting in his training, the newly-minted national record holder said, “The weight has given me more power. I’ve been training so I won’t lose to the bigger swimmers.”
Looking ahead to the World Championships now that he made the squad, Tanaka said, “This time still has a long way to go. I want to work hard and aim to make it to the semi-finals and finals in the 22-second range.
This is wild because I think he’s actually around 5’6” (~168cm). He’s also traditionally a 200 freestyler (1:47 or so) so he can definitely finish a 100. Good on him.