Skip to main content

Federation Announces Strict Qualifying Times for 2013 World Championships Team

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/f-sp-tp0-20120612-966393.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner

Rikuren, the Japanese athletics federation, announced on June 12 the criteria for selection for Japan's team for next year's Moscow World Championships.  To encourage Japanese athletes to get faster, the qualification times announced for the marathon are far higher than in previous years, while track and field events will see their first-ever specific qualifying marks.

Five men and five women can run the marathon in Moscow.  To make the team, men must run 2:07:59 or better and women 2:23:59 or better at any of the three major domestic men's and women's marathons.  Any athlete who clears these times at one of five specified overseas races will also be a candidate for the team.

The domestic races for men are the Fukuoka International Marathon, the Tokyo Marathon and the Biwako Mainichi Marathon, while for women the races are the Yokohama International Women's Marathon, the Osaka International Women's Marathon and the Nagoya Women's Marathon.  The five international races are the World Marathon Majors, Berlin, Chicago, New York, Boston and London.  If no athletes clear the criteria, the top three Japanese finishers at the above domestic races as well as the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon  for men and the Hokkaido Marathon for women will be considered.

In each track and field event the criteria will be: 1. Any athlete who clears the A-standard mark specified by Rikuren and wins their event at the National Championships, or 2. Any athlete who has cleared Rikuren's qualification mark and makes the top eight at the National Championships.  The qualification marks will be announced at a later date, but according to Rikuren official Mitsugi Ogata, "The Federation will base the marks on the world top twelve rankings.  For track events this will be faster than the A-standard, while for field events it will be around the same as the A-standard."

Comments

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...

Japan Names Marathon Teams for Tokyo World Championships

On Mar. 26 the JAAF named its women's and men's marathon teams for September's Tokyo World Championships. On the women's side the team has veterans Sayaka Sato and Yuka Ando off the strength of a runner-up finish for Sato in Nagoya this year and a win in Nagoya last year by Ando, and newcomer Kana Kobayashi , 23, who has risen quickly from being a fun runner at Waseda University last year to a 2nd-place finish in Osaka Women's this year. Paris Olympics 6th-placer Yuka Suzuki was named alternate after finishing 3rd behind Kobayashi in Osaka Women's. On the men's side the team is led by last year's Fukuoka International Marathon CR breaker Yuya Yoshida and this year's Osaka runner-up Ryota Kondo . The 3rd spot on the team is reserved for JMC Series winner Naoki Koyama , who hasn't cleared the 2:06:30 World Championships qualifying standard and has to wait for the May 4 qualifying deadline for confirmation that the 1184 points he has in the Roa...