Skip to main content

Bat-Ochir, Mbote, Imai and Maeda to Face Off at Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon

http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=spo&k=2014011500595

translated and edited by Brett Larner

 On Jan. 15 the organizers of the 63rd Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon on Feb. 2 announced the names of this year's elite field.  On the domestic men's list are the fastest Japanese marathoner of 2013, Kazuhiro Maeda (Team Kyudenko), 2013 New York City Marathon 6th-place finisher Masato Imai (Team Toyota Kyushu) and Kenichi Shiraishi (Team Asahi Kasei), winner of last weekend's Oita City Half Marathon.  Their top foreign competition comes from 2013 Hofu Yomiuri Marathon winner and 2012 Beppu-Oita runner-up Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (Mongolia) and 2:07:37 Kenyan Jason Mbote.

63rd Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon Elite Field
Oita, 2/2/14
click here for complete field listing

 Men
Daniel Njenga (Kenya/Team Yakult) - 2:06:16 (Chicago 2002)
Jason Mbote (Kenya) - 2:07:37 (Seoul 2008)
Kazuhiro Maeda (Team Kyudenko) - 2:08:00 (Tokyo 2013)
Ser-Od Bat-Ochir (Mongolia) - 2:09:00 (Hofu 2013)
Yuko Matsumiya (Team Hitachi Butsuryu) - 2:09:18 (Lake Biwa 2005)
Tomoyuki Sato (Team Asahi Kasei) - 2:09:43 (Tokyo Int'l 2004)
Fekadu Lema (Ethiopia) - 2:09:50 (Hamburg 2012) - withdrawn, Jan. 30
Masashi Hayashi (Team Yakult) - 2:09:55 (Lake Biwa 2012)
Bunta Kuroki (Team Yasukawa Denki) - 2:10:08 (Fukuoka Int'l 2012) - withdrawn, Jan. 30
Gezahegn Abera (Ethiopia) - 2:10:17 (Barcelona 2013)
Masato Imai (Team Toyota Kyushu) - 2:10:29 (Tokyo 2013)
Seiji Kobayashi (Mitsubishi Juko RC) - 2:10:38 (Beppu-Oita 2009)
Soji Ikeda (Team Yakult) - 2:10:59 (Tokyo 2013)
Takaaki Koda (Team Asahi Kasei) - 2:11:08 (Tokyo 2011)
Taiga Ito (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) - 2:11:15 (Tokyo 2013)
Yuki Moriwaki (Team JFE Steel) - 2:11:52 (Beppu-Oita 2012)
Kazuya Ishida (Team Nishitetsu) - 2:11:57 (Nobeoka 2012)
Tatsunari Hirayama (Team Yasukawa Denki) - 2:12:38 (Nobeoka 2013)
Kazuaki Shimizu (Team Yakult) - 2:12:49 (Nobeoka 2013)
Norihide Fujimori (Team Chugoku Denryoku) - 2:13:11 (Tokyo 2013)
Masayuki Obata (Team Yasukawa Denki) - 2:13:17 (Lake Biwa 2013)
Yu Chiba (Team Honda) - 2:13:19 (Beppu-Oita 2013)
Abraham Kiplimo (Uganda) - 2:13:32 (Rotterdam 2013)
Naoya Hashimoto (Team Chudenko) - 2:13:50 (Beppu-Oita 2010)
Keisuke Nakatani (Team JR Higashi Nihon) - 2:14:16 (Tokyo 2011)
Najim El Qady (Morocco) - 2:14:29 (Seoul 2009)
Kiyokatsu Hasegawa (Team JR Higashi Nihon) - 2:15:15 (Tokyo 2010)
Naoki Inoue (Team Komori Corp.) - 2:15:38 (Nobeoka 2012)

Debut Men
Mamoru Hirano (Team Yasukawa Denki) - 1:01:49 (Marugame 2012)
Ryo Kiname (Team Mitsubishi Juko Nagasaki) - 1:02:22 (Marugame 2012)
Kenichi Shiraishi (Team Asahi Kasei) - 1:02:23 (Nat'l Corp. Championships 2007)
Hiroyuki Yamamoto (Team Konica Minolta) - 1:02:43 (Marugame 2013)
Ryuji Watanabe (Team Toyota Kyushu) - 1:02:58a (Great North Run 2013)
Ryuji Ono (Team Asahi Kasei) - 27:53.19 (Niigata 2008)

Women
Mika Okunaga (Yufuin Hammock AC) - 2:27:16 (Osaka Int'l 2009)
Hisae Yoshimatsu (Shunan City Hall) - 2:28:49 (Sapporo 2002)
Rina Abe (Canon AC Kyushu) - debut - 1:18:20 half marathon
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
And why Yuki is not running ???
January 16, 2014 at 5:44 AM
Brett Larner said…
He is running the Kumamoto-jo Marathon on Feb. 16 instead.
January 16, 2014 at 6:37 AM
Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Hakone Champ AGU Hits 50 km a Day in Spring Break Training Camp

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...
1 comment
Read more

Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 Hakone Ekiden

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...
3 comments
Read more

70th Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden

The 70th running of the Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden happened over the start of the Golden Week holidays, a 3-day, 29-leg race covering 306.9 km around the northern prefecture of Yamagata. There used to be a lot more of these races where people from the prefecture run for their hometown teams on a Tour de Whatever prefecture or area it happens to be held in, but Yamagata's is one of the few to have survived this long. And amazingly enough, local broadcaster YBC live streamed the entire thing on Youtube. There aren't many corporate teams in the mostly rural area, so runners from the ND Software corporate team played a heavy role, its 2 best runners Masato Arao and Ryoma Takeuchi winning their stages on Day 2 with Takeuchi doubling to anchor the Kita-Murayama team to an overall 5th-place finish, and Koichi Shoji breaking the 2nd leg CR on Day 1 and winning the 2nd-to-last stage on Day 3 to play a key role in the Yamagata city team taking the overall win in 16:06:51, 3:09/km ...
1 comment
Read more