Masato Sakai

Masato Sakai, born on 6 June 1995, is a Japanese swimmer who specialises in the men's 200 metre butterfly. He won the silver medal in that event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, finishing just 0.04 seconds behind the winner Michael Phelps after holding sixth position at the 150 metre mark and storming through the final length. A year earlier, at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, he had finished fourth in the 200 metre butterfly, only 0.14 seconds outside the medals. His Rio performance placed him among the leading butterfly swimmers of his generation in Japan, a country with a long tradition in the stroke. His name is written in Japanese as Sakai Masato.