TOMORU HONDA

Tomoru Honda overcame a sprained ankle to make history in 2024 as the first Japanese man to be crowned world 200m butterfly champion. Tomoru pulled away on the final 50m to clinch the title at the World Championships in Doha and go one better than Olympic medallists Daiya Seto, Takeshi Matsuda and Takashi Yamamoto who all won silver in the four-length event.

It was the first global title of his career following silver at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and bronze at the Budapest and Fukuoka World Championships in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

What made his achievement even more notable was that Tomoru had injured his ankle less than 10 days earlier when he slipped on the stairs at his home.

He described winning gold as “my dream,” saying: “I’m extremely happy that I won the race, achieving my goal of winning the gold medal I’d always wanted. Despite injuring my ankle on the fifth of February, I aimed for a better time, but I am relieved that I performed to the best of my ability given the circumstances.”

In October 2022, Tomoru became the fastest man in 200 fly history in the short-course pool with a time of 1:46.85 at the Japanese Championships in Tokyo.

With that, he sliced 1.39secs from the world record of 1:48.24 held by Seto since December 2018.

“I really wanted to get the world record in this race and am super happy to get 1:46,” he said. “My aim was to go out fast and endure until the finish which I could.”