TOKYO, (Reuters) – Japan’s head swimming coach has warned the country’s elite swimmers they will win nothing at next year’s London Olympics unless they learn from their world championship flop.
Norimasa Hirai told yesterday’s Japanese media: “If the swimmers don’t improve their performances significantly we can forget about any gold medals in London.”
A repeat of his 100 and 200 metres breaststroke double at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics next year looked beyond even Kosuke Kitajima’s powers as he left Shanghai with just one silver.
With American Ryan Lochte and China’s Sun Yang grabbing headlines, and setting the only two world records — Sun’s the long-standing men’s 1,500 freestyle mark, Hirai put his swimmers on red alert for next year’s London Games.
“I expect more world records will be broken next year,” Hirai said, while noting Japan’s swimmers faced being left behind unless they faced the challenge head-on.
“The world’s best swimmers will all raise their level and come to London even stronger. We have to improve our times by quite a bit.”
Japan finished the world championships with just four silver and two bronze medals.
“Athletes like Lochte and Sung Yang can produce these results because they believe in what they’re doing everyday in training, by training hard,” Hirai added.
“They can just climb onto the blocks and do what they do in practice. We’ve learned some hard lessons.”
Hirai said backstroker Ryosuke Irie had committed a bad error in underestimating Lochte.
“I think some didn’t predict how fast their rivals could swim,” Hirai said. “Ryosuke against Lochte, for example. Irie may have to reconsider his race plan against him.”
