Rie Kaneto
Rie Kaneto is a Japanese competitive swimmer who specializes in breaststroke events. She won the gold medal in the 200 meter breaststroke at the 2016 Summer Olympics.Career
She represented her nation Japan, as a 19-year-old junior, at the 2008 Summer Olympics and has won a career total of four medals in a major international competition, spanning two editions of the Summer Universiade, the Short Course Worlds, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Apart from her Olympic career, Kaneto also demolished both a Japanese and Asian record of 2:20.72 at the Japan University Championships in Kumamoto. Kaneto is a physical education graduate at Tokai University in Hiroshima.
Rie made her international swimming debut at the 2007 Summer Universiade in Bangkok, Thailand, quickly claiming a silver medal in the 200 m breaststroke by less than 0.04 of a second behind South Korea's Jung Seul-ki in 2:25.63. Rie's best effort at these Games vaulted her up to twelfth in the world rankings.
Rie earned her first selection to the Japanese team to compete in the women's 200 m breaststroke at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Leading up to the Games, she placed second behind Megumi Taneda at the Olympic trials in Tokyo with a FINA A-standard entry time of 2:26.28. Kaneto touched out Taneda to take the seventh spot in the final by nine hundredths of a second, in an outstanding time of 2:25.14.
At the 2009 Summer Universiade in Belgrade, Serbia, Rie set an Asian and Japanese mark of 2:22.32 to claim the 200 m breaststroke title, just a single hundredth margin off her record from the national championships.
In 2010, Rie surprisingly missed out the podium in the 200 m breaststroke at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, when she placed fourth behind two Chinese swimmers and new champion Jeong Da-rae of South Korea in 2:25.63.
