(Beijing, February 4) The eruption of the Japanese swimmers in the women's 100m butterfly, men's 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley heats highlighted this evening's races of the "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 Swimming China Open at the National Aquatics Center.

In the men's 200m butterfly preliminaries, Sakata Ryusuke of Japan touched the wall in 1:58.47 to top the group as Moss Burmester of New Zealand and Polish Pawel Korzeniowski placed second and third respectively.

In the women's 100m butterfly, Japanese Kato Yuka finished first in 58.99, 0.61 ahead of China's Xu Yanwei. Poland's Otylia Jedrzejczak ranked seventh and made to the final too.

German Helge Meeuw clocked 2:00.17 to get reign in the men's 200m backstroke, followed by Korean Sung Min. China's Sun Xiaolei and Zhang Yu also entered the final.

Liao Yali of China finished in 1:02.64 leading the women's 100m backstroke heats while her teammate Chen Yanyan stood fourth with 1;03.70. Antje Buschschulte of Germany and Nikolett Szepesi of Hungary ended in second and third respectively.

Japan was in the limelight again in the last heats of the day as Sano Hidemasa dominated the men's 400m individual medley with 4:20.96. Poland's Mateusz Matczak and Hungary's Laszio Cseh came in second and third tandem with China's He Xiaofeng being fourth.

Seven finals will be staged tomorrow, the last day of the swimming event.