Olympian Tomoru Honda Gets One Year Suspended Sentence for Driving Incident
Japanese Olympic swimmer Tomoru Honda received a suspended sentence of one year in prison on Wednesday for a dangerous driving incident.
Honda, 24, will have his sentence suspended for three years. The judgement was handed down by Judge Keita Nakajima in the Tachikawa branch of Tokyo District court.
At around 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 21, 2025, Honda was driving between 88 and 108 kilometers per hour (54 and 67 miles per hour) in a 30-kph zone (18 mph). He crashed into an oncoming car, leading to injuries to the car’s drive, a person in their 60s, that included a fractured sternum.
Nakajima, in his ruling, said that Honda was “extremely dangerous and reckless” in his actions, leaving him “no room for leniency” in his ruling. Nakajima decided on a suspended sentence given that Honda has also faced social and professional consequences for his actions, including a ruling from the Japan Swimming Federation that barred him from competing at the Pan Pacific Championships in August and this month’s Asian Games.
Honda is a native of Yokohama. He won a silver medal at the Olympics in Tokyo in the men’s 200 butterfly, one of only three swimming medals for the host country at those games. He is a two-time Asian Games gold medalist and won the 200 fly World Championship in 2024 after bronze medals at the previous to installments of the competition.
At the Paris Olympics in 2024, Honda finished 22nd in the 200 fly, his only event, failing to advance out of prelims.
Honda said in a court statement, in which he apologized for the incident, that poor recent results contributed to his lapse in judgement.
“I feel sorry for causing trouble to many people,” Honda said. “I will never drive again.”
In a statement, the Japanese Swimming Federation expressed sympathy to the victims and their family while also apologizing for the violation of public trust that the incident entailed. It also pledged to step up compliance education and social responsibility training within its membership
As for Honda, the federation said that it will “thoroughly review the contents of the judgement” to proceed with any possible ethics committee proceedings. It again highlighted, as it did in the summer, the delay between the incident and it being reported by Honda.
