2022 JAPANESE SELECTION MEET
- Wednesday, March 2nd – Saturday, March 5th
- Tatsumi International Swimming Centre, Tokyo, Japan
- LCM (50m)
- Selection Meet for 2022 Budapest World Championships, 2022 Asian Games, World University Games
- Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap/Day 4 Recap
- Results
While competing on the final day of the 2022 Japanese Selection Meet, 22-year-old Yu Hanaguruma ripped a new lifetime best of 2:07.99 to take gold in the men’s 200m breaststroke.
En route, Hanaguruma beat out the likes of Olympians Ryuya Mura and Shoma Sato, who settled for silver and bronze with respective efforts of 2:08.11 and 2:08.26.
Splitting 1:02.66/1:05.33, Hanaguruma crushed his previous lifetime best of 2:08.95, a mark he put up in June of 2021. In doing so, Hanaguruma now becomes the 7th man from Japan to have broken the 2:08 barrier in this 200m breast event, one in which three different Japanese men have owned the World Record in recent history.
Japan’s Sub-2:08 200 Breaststroker Men
- Shoma Sato – PB 2:06.40
- Ippei Watanabe – PB 2:06.67 (former WR)
- Akihiro Yamaguchi – PB 2:07.01 (former WR)
- Yasuhiro Koseki – PB 2:07.18
- Kosuke Kitajima – PB 2:07.51 (former WR)
- Ryuya Mura – PB 2:07.58
- Yu Hanaguruma – PB 2:07.99
Hanaguruma first introduced himself to the world at the 2018 Youth Olympics, where he took the 200m breaststroke gold there in Argentina in 2:11.63.
Kitajima is building these boys in a lab I swear to god
Great pacing.
Did Sato not qualify for the 200 breast then?
no as you need to be top 2 as well as make the minimum time
It’s like they pull a new up and coming 200 breaststroker out of a hat every year or two
If only they timed it better for Olympic season