Skip to main content

Fujiwara to Face Kawauchi at Gold Coast Airport Marathon

by Brett Larner
Fujiwara photo c/o Arata Project
Kawauchi photo by Arata Fujiwara

For its first running as an IAAF gold label event, Australia's Gold Coast Airport Marathon has announced that 2:07:48 Olympian Arata Fujiwara (Miki House) will face his greatest rival, defending Gold Coast champion and course record co-holder Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't), at this year's race on July 6.  As the two independents who have changed the face of modern Japanese men's marathoning, Fujiwara and Kawauchi should bring the fireworks to light up one of the summer's best races.  Or winter, depending on your point of view.

The only Japanese man in the last 27 years to win a marathon outside Japan sub-2:10, Fujiwara had a nearly undefeated record against Kawauchi going into last fall, starting the season by beating him at the Great North Run and Hakodate Half Marathon.  Since then he's had three straight losses, losing to Kawauchi at Fukuoka, the Sendai Half and the Gifu Seiryu Half along with weak results at the Marugame Half and Tokyo Marathon in February after coming down with the flu.  Appearing with support from JRN, the Gold Coast Airport Marathon is the first marathon Fujiwara is running as part of a two-year training plan to take him to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and after the dry spell he has gone through he is looking to get things flowing again with another sub-2:10 overseas win the way he likes it best, ahead of Kawauchi.

Kawauchi comes into the race with momentum, tying the 2:10:01 CR last year and setting four marathon course records so far this year along with a 2:09:36 at May's Hamburg Marathon that made him the first Japanese man in history to go sub-2:10 seven times in his career.  Achieving what he missed last year, a sub-2:10 win on foreign soil, would put him into the exclusive five-man club of which Fujiwara is already a member, and there is nobody he'd like to beat more to get there.  Kawauchi may be the favorite, but with a minority two wins against Fujiwara in five marathons to date it won't be easy.  Whoever crosses the line first, the course record is bound to fall, and the chances look good that the ancient 2:09:18 Australian all-comers' record set in 1982 by the great Rob de Castella will finally go.

In the weeks before the race look for a full field preview and an exclusive talk on JRN with Fujiwara about his training in Kenya for the Gold Coast Airport Marathon.  JRN will be on-site at the race, so look also for more original coverage throughout race weekend.

text (c) 2014 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Kawauchi photo (c) 2013 Arata Fujiwara, all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more