Skip to main content

Kawamoto Sets 800 m Jr. NR at Nittai Time Trials

by Brett Larner

Two weeks out from the 2012 National Track and Field Championships in Osaka, the second-to-last Nittai University Time Trials meet of the season was relatively quiet.  Olympic track favorites Yuki Sato (Team Nissin Shokuhin) and Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) faced off against African newcomers Demmababa Bikila (Team Kanebo), Hassan Agatoyashin (Team Chuo Hatsujo) and Johana Maina (Team Fujitsu) over 5000 m with a challenge from Toyo University ace Yuta Shitara.  All six took their turns leading, but Sato and Ugachi pulled away over a faster second half to turn the race into a duel, Sato taking the win by three seconds in 13:43.01.  Seven men altogether cleared 14 minutes, Shitara recording a new PB of 13:51.16.

But the big result of the meet came in the men's 800 m A-heat, where national high school record holder Sho Kawamoto (Nihon Univ.), who hails from the distance-running Mecca of Saku, Nagano, raced national record holder Masato Yokota (Team Fujitsu) to a photo finish, chopping a quarter of a second off the nearly sixteen-year-old junior national record.  Yokota took the win in 1:46.87, well off his NR mark, but Kawamoto was only 0.02 back in a new junior NR of 1:46.89.  The pair will meet again at next month's National Track & Field Championships, where Kawamoto will have to chase both Yokota and the Olympic B-standard.

Comments

Anonymous said…
B-standard for Yokota:
http://www.iaaf.org/Mini/IWC12/Results/ResultsByEventIWC.aspx?/eventCode=4943/sex=M/discCode=800/result.html#M800
Brett Larner said…
Excellent, thank you for that link. I hadn't seen that result.

Most-Read This Week

Ninja Runner Yuka Ando Leads Japanese Women's Marathon Team in London: "I Want to Go For It"

Her form has been dubbed "ninja running." Both arms held straight down with almost no movement. That idiosyncratic style carried Yuka Ando , 23, to the fastest-ever marathon debut by a Japanese woman, 2:21:36, at March's Nagoya Women's Marathon to land at #4 on the all-time Japanese lists. All at once Ando found herself catapulted to the top level of women's marathoning, a candidate for Japan's next great marathoner. When she was younger Ando ran moving her arms like other runners, but she had a bad habit of moving robotically, her upper body and lower body not working in sync. The turning point came in 2014 when she joined Suzuki Hamamatsu AC . Working there with coach Masayuki Satouchi to eliminate the faults in her form, the pair arrived at the ninja running style that let her run relaxed. "Other people keep asking me, "Isn't it hard to run like that?" but for me it's comfortable," she said. The efficient form helped her mai

Yamaguchi 10th at United Airlines NYC Half - Weekend Overseas Results

2024 national cross-country champion Tomonori Yamaguchi was the top Japanese finisher in the men's race at the United Airlines NYC Half , taking 10th in 1:04:36. A 2nd-year at Waseda University , Yamaguchi was one of three collegiate runners running New York in the 11th year of JRN's development program collaboration between the Ageo City Half Marathon and the New York Road Runners, a program that has seen people like future half marathon and marathon NR breaker Yuta Shitara and Paris Olympic team member Akira Akasaki make their international debuts. Yamaguchi's Waseda teammate Taishi Ito started fast, going with the leaders through 5 km in 14:29 before losing touch. Hosei University senior Rei Matsunaga went through in 14:42 in his last race before joining the JR Higashi Nihon corporate team in April. Yamaguchi, who caught COVID after winning last month's National Cross-Country Championships, started more conservatively with a 15:11 first 5km. But where both Ito

Rui Aoki Wins National University Men's Half Marathon - Weekend Results

Yuka Ando 's win at the Nagoya Women's Marathon was the big news of the weekend, but there were other high-level races happening, even in Nagoya. Held in parallel with the marathon, the Nagoya City Half Marathon saw Australians Natalie Rule and Ed Goddard take easy wins by about 2.5 minutes each, Rule in 1:13:57 and Goddard in 1:04:01. The new Biwako Marathon also had a non-Japanese winner, China's Yousheng Guan scoring 1st in 2:14:58 with Japan's Hirohito Sugai next in 2:16:40. Mikiko Ota won the women's race in 2:50:44. The Shizuoka Marathon returned for its first running in five years, with club runner Shumpei Oda leading the top 7 men under 2:20 in 2:15:36. Women's winner Remi Tanaka ran 2:41:23, beating runner-up Ayumi Sano by exactly 7 minutes. And in Tokyo, Rui Aoki continued what has been a great season so far for Koku Gakuin University with a win at the National University Men's Half Marathon . Aoki and Hiro Konda of Chuo Gakuin Unive