In the qualifying for the women's 400m relay at the Tokyo Olympics, Japan was eliminated from the qualifying in 9th place overall.
In Japan, the first swimmer is Chihiro Igarashi, the second swimmer is Rikako Ikee, the third swimmer is Natsumi Sakai, and the fourth swimmer is Rika Omoto. I finished in time, but I was eliminated from the qualifying in 9th place overall.
Nevertheless, Ikee took a big step in his "second swimming life" at the Tokyo Olympics, the first international competition after returning to competition.
Just three years ago ...
Exactly three years ago, on the 24th, Ikee, who was in the third year of high school at the time, was at the Tokyo Skytree observatory at a height of 350 meters above the ground. It was the first place I visited after attending the ceremony for the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Ikee, who continued to grow with the momentum of dropping flying birds, did not make a soft noise even in harsh practice, and had the strength to face the pressure of competing with the world's rivals at 0.01. "Honestly, it's messed up," he said in a bright tone as usual, but with a sense of weight.
While gently looking at the streets of Koiwa where I was born and raised and the Tokyo Aquatics Center, which is under construction, I think that "I think it's not really hard to think that I'm too small, because it's a swimming distance." "Because 100 meters is so fast," he tweeted to tell himself.
Three years after that, waiting for Ikee was a completely different day from what I had envisioned at the time.
I was hospitalized for about a year to treat leukemia, and even after returning to the pool, I couldn't swim as I expected and sometimes cried unknowingly. Even so, with the strength of the original defeat and the evolved "big and relaxed swim" that says "I can cover it naturally by swimming because I do not have muscle strength and weight", I have overcome each trial one by one. rice field.
Then, when he continued on a steeper road than he had imagined and reached the stage in Tokyo where everyone around him was surprised, Ikee described it as "my destiny."
The result of the first race, with friends, was a loss in qualifying, but the 21-year-old indomitable swimmer will not stop at this Olympics, where he wants to fulfill his mission.