Pan Pacific Championships, Night Two Finals: Van Mathias .01 off AR in 100 Breast
The 100 is Van Mathias’ world, and everyone else is just breaststroking in it.
Mathias went 58.02 on Thursday night to win gold at the Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine, California. He’s within .01 seconds of his American record, set in June. Mathias owns the top four performances in the world in 2026.
Second was Shin Ohashi, the Japanese swimmer who lowered his world junior and Japanese senior records by .13 seconds to 58.54. Sam Williamson got bronze for Australia, his 59.34 edging Josh Matheny by .08 seconds.
Mathias has had a storybook year. In 2023, as a grad student at Indiana, Mathias gave up his usual specialty zone of the 100 fly/200 fly/200 individual medley, despite it leading to nine A finals at the Big Ten Championships and six swims at NCAAs. He shifted to the 50 free as a senior, won a Big Ten title and ended up 11th in the event at NCAAs with limited sprint experience.
After a brief retirement, he’s taken to a streamlined training schedule that has focused on speed over yardage. In 2021, he was 41st in the 200 fly at Olympic Trials and 48th in the 100 fly and didn’t swim at Trials in 2024. But a stellar summer of 2025 launched him onto the team, and he’s taken it from there.
Mathias isn’t alone, though. Ohashi has a World Junior Record and a Japanese record, in that swimming nation’s most hallowed of strokes. Oliver Dawson has been on a tear of Canadian super-suited breaststroke records.
He was sixth at night in 59.85, behind Japan’s Yamato Okadome. Okadome hit the same time of 59.50 as American Campbell McKean in winning the B final, with Japan’s Taku Taniguchi also getting under a minute in 59.98 from the consolation final.
