Skip to main content

Noguchi Aims to Make Comeback "Starting With a Half"

http://www.daily.co.jp/newsflash/2010/06/11/0003080689.shtml

translated by Brett Larner

Long off the field of battle and sitting on the sidelines, marathoner Mizuki Noguchi (Team Sysmex) attended a June 11 memorial service for Hanji Aoki, an honorary member of Rikuren's directory board and one of the luminaries of the Japanese athletics world. Asked about her condition, Noguchi told reporters "I'm back in training. It's not to the point where I can plan my next race. But anyway, my main focus is on getting my muscles back into the condition they used to be in."

At the memorial service Noguchi sat at the same table with the women who preceeded her as Olympic marathon medalists, Yuko Arimori and Naoko Takahashi. "We talked a bit," said Noguchi. "They told me that I have to make a comeback, that I can't keep on like this. I was really happy to hear such warm words of support coming from people like them. It makes me want to do it," she said with a smile which showed that her drive to make the London Olympics is still burning strong.

"I don't know when my comeback race will be yet," she went on, "but I'm back to working on my speed on the track. I'd like to start with a half marathon." For the former 'Queen of the Half Marathon' it would be a major step to return to her best distance.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I would love to see her back. Her race in Athens was one of the bravest and smartest races I've ever seen run.
hotboykevin said…
No one knows her anymore. She's irrelevant. I'm moving on to the Lakers and the world cup.
hotboykevin said…
Nothing much is going on these days. And the japanese runners are running slow. only run 34:00 10000. @008-2007 was way better.Lots of good japanese runners are retiring and none of them run track.

Most-Read This Week

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...

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...

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."...