Skip to main content

Always in Threes - Nakamura on World Championships Day Eight

by Brett Larner

2009 women's 5000 m national champion Yurika Nakamura may not be as talented as the top Kenyans and Ethiopians or even some of her countrywomen, but her performance in the 5000 m final at the 2009 World Championships marks her as the star of the Japanese team with only the medal hopefuls in the women's marathon and men's javelin left to outshine her efforts. In the 10000 m and the 5000 m heats Nakamura took the early lead to keep the races from going out too slowly, ran negative splits, and was rewarded with credible PBs. In the 5000 m final it was the same story. At 1000 m she was in the lead in 3:06.02. When the real racing began she was left behind, ultimately finishing 12th of 15, but she improved her PB from the heats by 8 seconds as she clocked a very decent 15:13.01. Three races in eight days, three PBs. With her stated goal for this year being to improve her track speed before taking another shot at the marathon Nakamura looks well on the way to something big.

2008 national champion and 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi was one spot ahead of Nakamura, 11th overall in 15:12.44. Her time was far off her PB, but after a spring filled with injury it was a season best mark and showed that Kobayashi is almost back to form.

The most anticipated event of the evening for Japanese viewers was the men's 4x100 m relay. Sporting a new lineup containing only half of its Beijing Olympics bronze medal-winning squad along with two up-and-coming student runners, the Japanese team easily made the final. Up against giants like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, the new Japanese team was clipped for bronze by the British team by a margin of 0.28 seconds. The Japanese team's mark of 38.30 was a season best, and while they fell short of extending the legacy of last year's first-ever Japanese men's track medal it was a hopeful sign for the country's aspirations of developing world-class sprinters. The women's 4x100 m squad featuring national record holder Chisato Fukushima was unable to follow suit, finishing 14th of 17 in the first round and failing to advance, with the women's 4x400 m squad also left behind at 14th in the heats.

Japanese national team captain Daichi Sawano made the final of the men's pole vault, but after clearing only 5.50 he finished 10th of 15.

(c) 2009 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Takeshi Soh Reflects on 54 Years in the Sport on His Retirement as Asahi Kasei Head Coach

After 54 years at the Asahi Kasei corporate team, first as athlete and then as coach, Takeshi Soh will retire at the end of this month. Together with his twin brother Shigeru Soh they formed a duo who were icons of the Japanese marathoning world and went all the way to the Olympics. After retiring from competition Takeshi devoted himself to coaching young athletes and came to play a primary role in the leadership of Japanese long distance. His list of achievements is long, and so is the list of those he influenced and inspired. His twin Shigeru was chosen for three Olympic teams in the marathon, Montreal in 1976, Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. Takeshi was named to the Moscow and Los Angeles teams, placing 4th in L.A. to confirm his position as one of the greatest names in the sport in that era. After becoming a coach the twins helped lead Hiromi Taniguchi to gold at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships, Koichi Morishita to silver a year later at the Barcelona Olympics, and o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Evaluating the Japan Marathon Championship Series IV Awards

  The JAAF held the award ceremony for its Japan Marathon Championship Series IV last night in Tokyo, the whole thing streamed live on Youtube. The two-year series, in this case running from April, 2023 to March, 2025, scores marathoners on time and place in domestic races and high-level international races, with athletes' two best performances combining to give them their series rankings. Series winners score guaranteed places on the 2025 Tokyo World Championships team , with the top 8 women and men earning prize money: 1st: ¥6,000,000 (~$40,000 USD) 2nd: ¥3,000,000 (~$20,000) 3rd: ¥1,000,000 (~$6,700) 4th: ¥800,000 (~$5,300) 5th: ¥700,000 (~$4,700) 6th: ¥500,000 (~$3,300) 7th: ¥300,000 (~$2,000) 8th: ¥200,000 (~$1,300) Points for time are scored according to World Athletics scoring tables, with placing points based on races' designated level. Given the JAAF's financial interests in the big domestic races and the income stream from their TV broadcasts, the scoring system ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Weekend Road and Track Roundup

A roundup of the main road and track action on the last weekend of Japan's 2024-25 academic and fiscal year: Doubling off a 2:07:06 PB at the Tokyo Marathon 4 weeks ago, Tatsuya Maruyama took bronze at the Asian Marathon Championships in Jiaxing, China in 2:11:56. Gold went to North Korea's Il Ryong Han in a breakaway 2:11:18, with silver medalist Tianyu Chen of China just ahead of Maruyama in 2:11:50. Japan's Shungo Yokota was a distant 4th in 2:14:00, with Japan-based Mongolian NR holder Ser-Od Bat-Ochir 6th in 2:15:14. Japanese women Kaede Kawamura and Natsumi Matsushita were 5th and 6th in 2:31:26 and 2:34:40, with medals going to China's Bing Wu , gold in 2:26:01, North Korea's Kwang-Ok Ri , silver right behind her in 2:26:07, and defending gold medalist Khishigsaikhan Galbadrakh landing in bronze this time in 2:28:56, her third sub-2:29 performance so far in 2025. Back home, four men broke 2:20 at the Fukui Sakura Marathon . Ko Kobayashi from the Shi...
1 comment
Read more