2026 KIRARA CUP
- Friday, February 6th – Sunday, February 8th
- Yamaguchi Kirara Expo Memorial Park Swimming Pool
- LCM (50m)
- Day 1 Recap
- Results
The 2026 Kirara Cup wrapped up tonight from the Yamaguchi Kirara Expo Memorial Park Swimming Pool but not before additional meet records bit the dust to conclude the three-day competition.
16-year-old World Junior Record holder Shin Ohashi set himself apart from the men’s 200m breaststroke field in a big way, producing a super solid in-season swim of 2:08.98.
That established a new Kirara Cup record as our Swammy Award winner for 2025’s World Junior Male Swimmer of the Year beat the field by nearly three seconds.
Yoshihisa Hirai was next to the wall in 2:11.71 while Shoma Sato, a 2020 Olympian, posted 2:14.38 as the bronze medalist.
Ohashi’s lifetime best in this event rests at the monster 2:06.91 he registered at the 79th Kinki High School Swimming Championships in July of last year. The teen proved that performance was anything but a fluke, following up with another high-caliber outing of 2:06.96 at November’s Japan Open to rank #1 in the world on the season.
As for the 3rd-place finisher here, Sato, the 25-year-old has been as fast as 2:06.40 in his career, the Japanese national record he turned in at the 2021 Olympic Trials. At the Tokyo Olympics, although he entered as a medal favorite, he ultimately settled for 10th place in a time of 2:09.04 and has yet to bring his swimming back up to that 2:06-tier.
Another meet record went down at the hands of Shunichi Nakao, the gold medalist in the men’s 50m butterfly.
Nakao stopped the clock at 23.53 as the sole swimmer of the field to delve under the 24-second barrier.
Mitsutoki Enomoto touched in 24.09 for silver and Kosuke Tsukamoto rounded out the podium in 24.24.
Additional winners on the weekend included World Championships open water medalist Ichika Kajimoto, following up her 800m free win from night one with a victory in the 400m free.
Kajimoto clocked a time of 4:08.53 to defeat the field handily, with the next-closest competitor represented by Hina Kuno, who hit 4:12.33.
Kajimoto’s effort wasn’t too terribly far off her lifetime best in this event, a time of 4:06.81 notched at the 2025 Japanese Student Championships to become Japan’s 4th-fastest performer of all time.
Teenaged Olympic finalist Mio Narita touched first in the women’s 200m fly in 2:12.04 and freestyle ace Kazushi Imafuku captured gold in the men’s 200m free, with his result of 1:49.01 marking the sole time of the field under the 1:50 barrier.
Ace