Megumi Taneda (種田恵, Taneda Megumi, born September 20, 1986 in Sapporo) is a Japanese swimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events.[1][2] She claimed the 200 m breaststroke title in a close race against U.S. swimmer and eventual Olympic champion Rebecca Soni by 0.03 of a second at the 2005 Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey with a time of 2:27.81.[3][4] Taneda is an economics graduate at Kanagawa University in Kanagawa.
Taneda competed for the Japanese team in a breaststroke double at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Leading up to the Games, she emerged the only swimmer to meet the Olympic qualifying standard in the 100 m breaststroke with a 1:07.91, and then beat her rival Rie Kaneto to clear the FINA-A cut time in 2:24.54 for a 200 m breaststroke victory at the Olympic trials in Tokyo.[5][6] On the second day of the Games, Taneda missed out the semifinals by 0.08 of a second, after finishing seventeenth in the preliminary heats of the 100 m breaststroke in 1:08.45.[7] In her second event, 200 m breaststroke, Taneda rounded out the final in last place by nine hundredths of a second (0.09) behind her teammate Rie Kaneto in 2:25.23.[8][9]
