2024 Japan Olympic Trials
It was a shocking day for the men's 400m IM at the Japan Olympic Trials.
First of all, medal favorite Tomoru Honda He completely missed out on advancing to the finals. During this morning's heats, the 22-year-old Honda recorded a time of 4:16.97. This was well below his personal best of 4:09.98, which he recorded in December of last year, and placed him in 10th place, outside of the top eight.
And in tonight's final, the 13-time world champion Daiya Seto She fell short of the required time of 4 minutes 10.63 seconds set by the Japan Swimming Federation (JASF) to qualify for Paris.
18-year-old Tomoyuki Matsushita Tonight we upstaged Seto. Matsushita passed the final 100m free in 56.71 seconds and reached the wall first with a time of 4:10.04, a new lifetime best. Seto was nearly 1 second behind with a time of 4:10.84, falling 0.19 seconds short of the QT.
Seto has proven time and time again that he is more than capable of achieving QT. He holds his lifetime best of 4:06.09 from 2020 and owns six of Japan's top 10 all-time results.
At last year's JPN World Championship Trials, Seto recorded a scorch time of 4:07.92. She then won a bronze medal in Fukuoka with a time of 4:09.41.
Seto still has a chance to qualify for the Olympics in the men's 200m IM. He is ranked 9th in the world in this event with a season's best time of 1:57.54, and has already recorded a time within 0.03 of a second with a QT of 1:57.51.
