Tennessee Commit Mizuki Hirai Logs World #1 56.99 100 Fly In Tokyo

2025 KOSUKE KITAJIMA CUP

• Friday, January 24th – Sunday, January 26th
• Tokyo Aquatics Center, Tokyo, Japan
• LCM (50m)
• SwimSwam Preview
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap
• Results

We entered the final day of action at the 2025 Kosuke Kitajima Cup from the Tokyo Aquatics Center, the site of swimming action at the 2020 Olympic Games. The 3-day competition represents one of three annual ‘K’ meets, with both the annual Konami Open and Kirara Cup taking place next month.

This competition represents a qualifying opportunity for swimmers to etch their names onto the Japanese roster for this year’s World Championships. The primary qualification meet is the Japan Swim slated for April.

The women’s 400m free saw its meet record bite the dust, courtesy of winner Ruka Takezawa. 

18-year-old Takezawa put up a time of 4:09.27 to hold off Ichika Kajimoto, the fellow 18-year-old who also dipped under the former meet record with a solid 4:09.46. Waka Kobori rounded out the podium in 4:12.10.

The former Kosuke Kitajima Cup benchmark stood at 4:10.34 so the pair comfortably entered new territory with their sub-4:10 results.

While Kobori has been as fast as 4:05.57 in her career, Takezawa’s effort tonight checks in as a lifetime best, overtaking her previous PB of 4:09.83 from the 2023 Japan Championships. Kajimoto’s PB remains at the 4:09.05 logged at the Japan Student Championships last September.

The men’s 400m free saw Kaito Tabuchi get it done for gold in 3:50.71, with 400m IM Olympic silver medalist Tomoyuki Matsushita snagging silver in 3:52.01. Kaito Tsujimori bagged bronze in 3:52.18.

Multiple gold medalist here Mizuki Hirai put on a show in the women’s 100m fly, registering a winning effort of 56.99.

Opening in 26.64 and closing in 30.35, 17-year-old University of Tennessee commit Hirai beat the field by well over a second.

Nagisa Ikemoto was next to the wall in 58.56 followed by Shiho Matsumoto, last night’s 200m IM winner, in 58.82.

As for Hirai, her result here beat the 57.19 she logged in Paris to place 7th in the Olympic final. That was despite the teen hitting a much quicker 56.80 in the semi-finals and and an even faster 56.71 in the prelims.

Entering this competition, Hirai was the #1 ranked swimmer in the world this season with her time of 57.76 from December’s Japan Open.

Olympian Katsuhiro Matsumoto collected more hardware, topping the men’s edition of the 100m fly after winning the 50m fly skins on day one and the 100m freestyle on day two.

The 27-year-old punched a result of 51.42 (24.16/27.26) to claim the victory over last night’s 200m fly victor Genki Terakado.

Terakado settled for silver in 51.79 and Naoki Mizunuma earned the bronze in 52.17.

This trio represents some of the fastest Japanese 100m butterfly performers in history. Mizunuma owns the national record with the 50.81 put up in 2022 while Matsumoto’s personal best of 50.96 from 2023 ranks him #2. Terakado’s PB of 51.33 from last year rendered him Japan’s 8th-best performer of all time.

Three men dipped under the 2:10 barrier in the 200m breaststroke final, with Yamato Fukasawa leading the charge with 2:09.23.

Yu Hanaguruma, the World Championships silver medalist in this event in 2022, was next to the wall in 2:09.65 while Ippei Watanabe placed third tonight in 2:09.81 after scoring the quickest opening 100m of 1:02.05.

Hanaguruma and Watanabe finished in 5th and 6th place respectively at the 2024 Olympic Games.

Additional Winners

• Miyu Namba won the women’s 50m free skins over Mio Narita in the final head-to-head battle. The former hit a 3rd round time of 25.99 over the latter’s 26.63.
• Katsumi Nakamura logged a final time of 23.17 over Tatsuy Murasa‘s 24.06 in the 3rd round of the men’s 50m freestyle rapid-fire racing.
• The women’s 100m back saw Miki Takahashi get it done for gold in 1:01.12 while Takehara Shuichi grabbed gold on the men’s side in 54.14.
• 33-year-old Olympic finalist Satomi Suzuki followed up her 50m breast skins victory with a 200m breast win in 2:27.85.
• The women’s 400m IM event was re-run tonight after the flag placement mishap caused chaos on day one. Kobori was the top performer with a podium-topping effort of 4:39.71, the sole sub-4:50 outing of the pack.