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Ryosuke Irie

Personal information
Full name	Ryosuke Irie
Nationality	Japan
Stroke(s)	backstroke
Date of birth	January 24, 1990 (1990-01-24) (age 19)
Place of birth	Osaka Prefecture
Height	1.77 m (5 ft 9+1⁄2 in)
Weight	62 kilograms (140 lb)
Medal record Men's Swimming World Championships (LC) Silver 2009 Rome 200 m backstroke Summer Universiade Gold 2009 Belgrade 100 m backstroke Gold 2009 Belgrade 200 m backstroke Gold 2009 Belgrade 4×100m medley Asian Games Gold 2006 Doha 200m backstroke

Ryosuke Irie (入江 陵介, Irie Ryōsuke ^?, born January 24, 1990 in Osaka) is a Japanese backstroke swimmer. He is a Kinki University student in Osaka.

History

He was born in Osaka prefecture and started his actual swimming carrier in his junior high school years. In 2005 he won the national high school championships in 200 meter backstroke when he was a first year grade student. He made new high school student record in Japanese national championships in April 2006. He narrowly missed the entry for FINA World Aquatics Championships of that year. He won a gold medal with the time of 1:58.85 in 200 m backstroke at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar.

In August 2007, he attended his first world swimming competition, International Swim Meet 2007 held in Chiba, Japan. On August 22, he beat the previous high school record in 100 m backstroke with the time of 54.07 s. The next day, he beat another high school record in 200 m backstroke with the time of 1:57.03.

World record controversy

He swam the 200 meter backstroke in a Japanese record time of 1:52.86 on May 10 in a Japan-Australia swimming contest held in Canberra. Even though the time was lower than the world record, his time was rejected by FINA,^[1] swimming's international governing body, because he didn't wear an approved suit. Japan's swimming federation did approve the record, however, along with several others in which Japanese swimmers wore unapproved suits that were later ruled to yield an unfair advantage. Irie's time would have sliced 1.08 seconds off the 200 meter record set by American Ryan Lochte when he won gold at the Beijing Olympics. The high-tech swimsuit, which is made by Japanese sport wear manufacture Descente (who owns Arena), was not approved by FINA in a meeting held on May 20, 2009, and was called for modifications along with other 136 models.^[2]

Personal bests and records

In long course

• 50 m backstroke: 24.96 (April 18, 2009)^[3]
• 100 m backstroke: 52.24 Asian record (September 5, 2009)
• 200 m backstroke: 1:52.51 Asian record (July 31, 2009)

In short course

• 100 m backstroke: 51.31 (February 22, 2009)
• 200 m backstroke: 1:49.92 Asian record (February 21, 2009)

References

• http://www.joc.or.jp/beijing/athlete/aquatics/irieryosuke.html