At the World Swimming Championships held in Hungary, the men's 200m butterfly final was held on the 21st, and Tomoru Honda, a silver medalist of this event at the Tokyo Olympics, won the bronze medal.

Honda passed the semi-final of the previous day in 2nd place overall and faced the final held on the 21st.



In the final, the gold medalist of the Tokyo Olympics, Kristov Milák of Hungary, who swims in the lane next to Honda, will pull the race at a faster pace than the world record, but Honda will bite to the end 1 minute 53 He won the bronze medal by marking seconds 61.

This is the first medal of this tournament for the Japanese swimming team.



▽ The gold medal is a world record of 1 minute 50 seconds 34 and is a Mirak player.


▽ The silver medal was Leon Marchand of France who marked 1 minute 53 seconds 37 seconds.



Also, in the mixed 400-meter medley relay, Japan advanced to the final for the first time since it was adopted in the tournament in 2015, finishing in 7th place.



In other Japanese teams, Daiya Seto, who won the gold medal in the previous tournament in the semi-finals of the men's 200m individual medley, advanced to the final in 3rd place overall at 1: 56.74.



On the other hand, in the women's 200m butterfly semi-final, Kina Hayashi missed the final in 9th place overall and Chiho Mizuguchi in 16th place overall.



In the men's 100-meter freestyle qualifying, Katsuhiro Matsumoto was eliminated from the qualifying in 23rd place overall.



In addition, Japan, which advanced to 2nd place in the qualifying for artistic swimming and the team's technical routine final, won a silver medal by marking 92.2261 with a vampire-themed performance with expressiveness.

Japan is the podium for the first time in two tournaments in this event.



The first place was China with 94.7202 and the third place was Italy with 91.0191.

Japanese ace “first medal”

In this tournament, it was Tomoru Honda, who inspires himself to become a "Japanese ace", who brought the medals to the Japanese swimmers who had no medals so far.



Honda won the only male athlete's medal in the Japanese swimming team at the Tokyo Olympics last summer.

At the representative selection meeting of the international competition in March, in addition to the favorite 200-meter butterfly, the 400-meter individual medley was also nominated as the representative.



From around this time, Honda began to call himself a "Japanese ace."



"I think that if you have the awareness of being an ace, you can really exert your strength. In other words, I want to act and race like an ace.



"



However, in the Japan Championships that started in late April, although he won the 200m butterfly for the third consecutive time, he could not set a satisfactory time.



For this reason, Honda is not strong enough to call himself "Japanese Ace", and Honda will remain in Japan until early June while other Japanese national team members participate in training camps and races in Europe for the world championships. I retrained my swim.



The world championship that we have reached.

After the semi-final race the day before, Honda renewed his determination to "responsibly swim like an ace."



As declared, he brought the first medal of this tournament to the Japanese swimming team as "Japanese ace".

Honda "Relieved"

Tomoru Honda, who won the first medal as a Japanese swimmer in this tournament, smiled in an interview after the race, saying, "I am relieved to win the medal in the race I faced as a challenger."



In the final, Kristóf Milák in the next lane showed a swim that set a new world record, and Honda said, "I know my position in the world. Compared to other players of the same generation who are active. I'm still disappointed, but I want to show Japan's will at the World Championships in Fukuoka next year. "