Pan Pacific Championships, Night Two Finals: Tomoyuki Matsushita Holds Off Surging Carson Foster for 400 IM Title
Two of the three medalists from the Paris Olympics highlighted the Pan Pacs final of the men’s 400 IM, and both delivered sterling performances in a showdown that came down to the wire. Outside of Leon Marchand, Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsushita has been the world’s standout swimmer in the event for the past two years, winning silver at the Paris Olympics and 2025 World Championships. American Carson Foster, meanwhile, won global silver in 2022 and 2023 before securing Olympic bronze in Paris.
Their meeting Thursday evening in Irvine, their first in long course competition since the Olympics, saw Matsushita lead the entire way before holding off Foster in a tight finish. Matsushita entered with the world’s second-best time this year behind Marchand, having recorded his first sub-4:07 performance in March, but Foster proved a stubborn competitor, never losing more than a few tenths of ground to Matsushita on any 50-meter split.
As the swimmers turned from breaststroke to freestyle, Foster made his run, out-splitting his Japanese foe by a half-second coming home while the two swimmers hugged the lane line separating lanes three (Foster) and four (Matsushita). In the end, Matsushita had enough to hold on by 0.36, touching in 4:06.75 for gold.
That time erased the championship record of 4:07.59 set by Ryan Lochte 16 years ago in the same pool, and it reinforced Matsushita’s performance as the ninth-fastest performer in history. Marchand and Foster are the only active performers to ever swim quicker times.
Foster put together a solid performance for silver with his 4:07.11, just over a half-second off his best time of 4:06.56, first recorded in 2022 and matched in 2023. The United States grabbed a second medal in this event as Bobby Finke ripped a 55.86 freestyle split to move from sixth place into third. The same closing speed that made him an Olympic gold medalist in distance freestyle helped Finke earn his first-ever international medal in a medley race, his 4:07.59 just 0.13 off his lifetime best.
Asaki Nishikawa concluded a grueling day with a fourth-place time of 4:08.82, not far back of his season-best of 4:08.66 from June. Simply coming that close was impressive after Nishikawa had to race the event three times in one day. That happened because Nishikawa tied Japanese countryman Yumeki Kojima for the second-best time in prelims; with only two swimmers per country eligible to advance to the championship final, the two swam off for the right to advance, and Nishikawa came out on top.
Australia’s William Petric (4:09.24) and New Zealand’s Lewis Clareburt (4:09.86) also swam sub-4:10 performance sin the final.
