Skip to main content

'Ozaki Looking for Lifetime Best'

http://lrn.london-marathon.com/ozaki-looking-lifetime-best/

Note: In its London preview, American fan website letsrun.com inexplicably calls Ozaki, the 2009 World Championships silver medalist, a 'wanna-be.' It also incorrectly claims that she has never won a major marathon despite then listing her 2:23:30 win, which came at the 2008 Tokyo International Women's Marathon, one of the world's premier elite women's races, rather than the 2008 Tokyo Marathon as suggested in the website's preview. In her Tokyo International Women's Marathon win Ozaki beat London entrants Mara Yamauchi (GBR) and Svetlana Zakharova (RUS), 2009 Boston Marathon winner Salina Kosgei (Kenya), 2009 New York City Marathon winner Derartu Tulu (Ethiopia), 2:19 woman / 2009 Osaka International Women's Marathon winner Yoko Shibui (Team Mistui Sumitomo Kaijo) and 2009 World Championships team member / 2010 Nagoya International Women's Marathon winner Yuri Kano (Second Wind AC).

Besides these two strong performances, Ozaki was 2nd in her debut marathon at the 2008 Nagoya International Women's Marathon, a close 2nd behind London as the world's top-ranked elite women's marathon. London will be Ozaki's 4th marathon. As she states in the article linked at the top, her goal is a 2:21.

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon

On Apr. 9 the Kinki Region Bureau of Health, Labor and Welfare's Drug Control Division arrested Matthew Inglis Fox , 38, an Australian business owner of no known fixed address, on charges of violating the importation regulations of the Narcotics Control Act by smuggling tablets containing marijuana elements from the United States. The suspect had entered Japan in February to run in the Osaka Marathon . The suspect was arrested on suspicion of smuggling approximately 12 pills containing marijuana by sending them from a U.S. airport to Osaka's Kansai Airport using an international courier service on Feb. 19. The Osaka branch of the Customs Service discovered the tablets in arriving cargo and suspected them to be narcotics. Customs contacted the Narcotics Control Division, which then began its investigation of the case. According to the Narcotics Control Division, the suspect denies the charges.  Translator's note: Fox, who received a lifetime ban from the Ageo City Half Mara...

Tokyo Olympics Marathon Trials Winner Nakamura Enters Waseda Grad School

An Olympian in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, Shogo Nakamura (Fujitsu) announced on his social media that he has entered Waseda University 's Graduate School of Sport Science with the start of the new academic year this week. A graduate of Mie's Ueno Kogyo H.S. , Nakamura went to Komazawa University before joining Fujitsu in 2015. His senior year of high school he was 3rd overall and 2nd Japanese in the 5000 m at the National High School Track and Field Championships, and in the fall the same year he ran what was at the time the 7th-fastest high school mark ever, 13:50.38. At Komazawa he scored four individual stage wins across the three big university ekidens. In 2019 he won the MGC Race, Japan's marathon trials for the Tokyo Olympics, where he was 62nd in 2:22:23. Nakamura indicated that he would be studying "top sports management" under professor Takeo Hirata . "I'll be balancing competition and academics," Nakamura wrote. "I'm r...

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...