By Hideki Mochizuki, Swimming World Japanese correspondent
TOKYO, Japan, July 13. THE Japanese Swimming Federation has decided to stick to its unilateral decision to ratify Ryosuke Irie's men's 200 back time of 1:52.86 as its national record. However, the federation is going down the road of the asterisk and will place the designation next to the record in its books.
Since June 22, the Japanese Federation was faced with many decisions about how to handle Irie's record of 200m back of 1:52.86 after FINA decided not to ratify it as world record. Today, the Japanese Federation clung to its initial decision and will continue to ratify Irie's record as the Japanese record, but with the asterisk.
The recent reports indicate that the content of the asterisk would be that Irie's record is not ratified by FINA. All in all, the Japanese Record of men's 200m back today is faster than world record of 1:53.08 set by Aaron Peirsol at the U.S. Nationals. And, even though it stands to diminish the credibility of the Japanese national records, the federation continues to allow other Japanese records coming out in the 2009 Japan Nationals (April 16-19) to be ratified. Dozens of these records were established under the same non-approved swimsuits issues as Irie's national record in the 200 back such as Aquaforce Zero(Original).
Accordingly, Swimming World confirmed that the following Japanese records at least needs to be noticed as results of Aquaforce Zero.
Ryo Takeishi
men 50 breast: 27.47
Junya Koga:
men 50m back: 24.59 (prelim)
50m back: 24.45 (final)
100m back: 53.55 (prelim)
100m back: 52.87 (final)* this is also Asian Record
Ken Takakuwa
men 200 IM: 1:57.24 * this is also Asian Record 400 IM: 4:12.56 (prelim) 400 IM: 4:12.41 (final)* this is also Asian Record
Nanaka Tamura
women 50 breast: 31.55 (prelim)
50 breast: 31.41 (final)
200 breast: 2:23.29
Rie Kaneto
women 200 breast: 2:22.33 * this is also Asian Record
Kaneto went on to set an approved-suit record with a 2:22.32 at the World University Games.
These are only about national records. Yuta Suenaga's 2:08.77 in men's 200 breast was also under original Aquaforce Zero but not Japanese record. And suits were widely provided to unknown number of the participants at the nationals. It is now quite difficult to follow all of the records in Japan as the Federation allowed them to use until the end of next March 2010. The federation says that no more Japanese records will be ratified under non-approved, but national primary school, junior high school and high school record are all to be ratified even under non-approved again until the end of March next year.