Prelims of day three of the 2016 Japanese Nationals saw just a few number of events, all for women.<\/p>\n
The session kicked off with the women’s 100-meter backstroke led by\u00a0Miyuki Takemura’s<\/strong> top time of 1:00.68.\u00a0Natsumi Sakai<\/strong> was the only other swimmer to near the Japanese Olympic standard (59.85), posting a final time of 1:00.81.<\/p>\n In the women’s 200-meter butterfly the field stayed close together with\u00a0Nao Kobayashi<\/strong> edging ahead to claim the top seed. Kobayashi, who was ‘DNS’ for the event at this meet last year, was the only swimmer to finish below the 2:11 mark with a 2:10.58. The young\u00a0Suzuka Hasegawa\u00a0<\/strong>claimed second going into tonight’s semi-finals with a 2:!1.27, while\u00a0Natsumi Hoshi<\/strong> sits at third with a 2:11.53.<\/p>\n Hoshi, the gold medalist in the 200 fly at the World Championships last summer, currently sits at third in the world from her previously clocked 2:06.56 at the Konami Open in February, but her 2:05.56 from Kazan last August shows just how fast she can truly be.<\/p>\n Eighteen-year-old\u00a0Miho Teramura<\/strong> notched the top seed in the women’s 200-meter IM with a 2:12.51, sitting just outside of the Olympic standard of 2:11.03. Teramura’s time moves her to thirteenth in the world rankings for 2016 ahead of\u00a0Sakiko Shimizu<\/strong> and\u00a0Kanako Watanabe.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Shimizu currently sits at fourth in the world rankings after a 2:10.51 showing at the Konami Open in February, but finished second in prelims today with a 2:13.35. Watanabe, ranked ninth with a 2:11.92 from the New South Wales State Championships, finished third with a time of 2:13.61.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prelims of day three of the 2016 Japanese Nationals saw just a few number of events, all for women. The session kicked off with the women’s 100-meter backstroke led by\u00a0Miyuki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":149539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[57366],"class_list":["post-193529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","tag-2016-japanese-nationals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n