Skip to main content

Ichida and Takada Ready to Take on United Airline NYC Half

by Brett Larner

Takashi Ichida (Daito Bunka Univ.) and Koki Takada (Waseda Univ.) at Riverside State Park, New York, on Mar. 13.

For the fourth year, the top two Japanese collegiate finishers from November's super-deep Ageo City Half Marathon have been invited to run the United Airlines NYC Half as part of a collaboration set up by JRN between the Ageo city government and the New York Road Runners.  At the 2013 Ageo Half Takashi Ichida (Daito Bunka University) won a five-way sprint finish in 1:02:36 to pick up his place at the 2014 NYC Half.  A stride behind him, Koki Takada (Waseda University), was the third collegiate finisher, ripping of his bib number in anger at missing out on the chance to run in a big race overseas.

A year later, Ichida and Takada were again head-to-head in Ageo, working together to push the pace and drop their competition one by one.  In another sprint finish Takada got the win this time in a PB 1:02:02 with Ichida right behind in a PB 1:02:03.  Both of them scored the NYC invite, and what made it special was that the two had been high school teammates.  Not just teammates, but members of the 2010 National High School Ekiden champion Kagoshima Jitsugyo H.S. team, Ichida leading off on the first stage and Takada running down the competition on the anchor leg to give Kagoshima Jitsugyo its first-ever national title with yet another brilliant sprint finish.

Just over four years later the two are now back together in New York.  For Ichida it is his last race as a student before graduating and joining the powerful Asahi Kasei corporate team.  Takada is a year younger and will head back to his senior year at Waseda, the most prestigious running university in Japan, but for him too there is an element of finality to the race.  Waseda head coach Yasuyuki Watanabe, one of the most revered collegiate runners in Japan's history and still immensely popular as a 40-something coach who developed the Nike Oregon Project's Suguru Osako, is retiring from Waseda at the end of the school year this month, and the United Airlines NYC Half will be his final official appearance as the head of the legendary Waseda.

In the three years so far the Japanese collegiates in NYC have represented, running the two fastest half marathon times and five of the top ten ever by Japanese men on U.S. soil.  #1 on that list is 1:01:48 by Yuta Shitara (Toyo University) at the 2012 NYC Half.  Both Ichida and Takada are gunning for that time, and with a bit of luck from the weather and competition and the kind of teamwork that comes from having bookended a national champion team there's a good chance they could join the growing list of Japanese students running world-class times under 62 minutes.

Even if they don't make it, going home with the kind of experience mostly absent from contemporary Japanese methodology will help put them on the short list for 2020 Olympic marathon hopefuls.  Imagine what it's going to take to make that team.  Running against a top-level international field in their youth and finding out how good they themselves already are can only give Ichida and Takada a leg up in the game.

text and photos (c) 2015 Brett Larner
all rights reserved

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Adane Leads Top 4 Under CR, Kondo 2:05:39 Debut, Mekasha Defends at Osaka Marathon

photos © 2025 Victor Sailer/PhotoRun, all rights reserved It was a bit too cold and windy for really fast times and snow started falling over the last quarter of the race, but that didn't stop the top 4 men at the Osaka Marathon from going under the course record. A 1:02:29 first half kept at least 16 men together with the 2:04:56 Japanese national record in sight, among them NR holder Kengo Suzuki in what he hoped would be a comeback run. By 30 km in 1:28:56, still close to NR pace despite motorcycle cops leading them too far past a turnaround cone, the lead group was down to a dozen, and the big uphill just after that really broke things up. Ethiopian trio Yihunilign Adane , Abdisa Tola and Getaneh Molla broke away after the hill, but with 2:05 in sight debuting sub-61 half marathoner Ryota Kondo and 2:06 man Kyohei Hosoya closed hard. 8 seconds back at 40 km, Kondo ran Tola and Molla down and caught Adane in the home straight. But Adane had the final kick to take the win i...

Osaka Marathon Preview

The Osaka Marathon is Monday, with a live ad-free national broadcast starting at 9:00 a.m. local time on NHK that you'll probably need a VPN to pick up online. No word yet on live results, but maybe try the separate elite field site . We'll post a link if something surfaces, and whatever we can from on the ground in Osaka. Anyway, there are some pretty good story lines this time around. Last year the big one was Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden Koku Gakuin University runner Kiyoto Hirabayashi winning with a debut and collegiate record of 2:06:18. That was eclipsed at the start of this month by Hiroki Wakabayashi from Hakone Ekiden winner Aoyama Gakuin University with a 2:06:07 at Beppu-Oita , and with the arguably more talented 2025-26 AGU captain Asahi Kuroda making his debut in Osaka that might not even last til the end of the month. But you want story? Here's story: On Wednesday right after his 21st birthday Wakabayashi and Kuroda's teammate Sena M...

3 Top-Tier Japanese Collegiate Runners in United Airlines NYC Half Elite Field

The NYRR have announced the elite fields for the 2025 United Airlines NYC Half , and 3 top-tier runners from Japanese universities feature prominently in the men's field. Having just lost his 59:32 collegiate record to Komazawa University 's Kotaro Shinohara in Marugame earlier this month , collegiate 5000 m and 10000 m record holder Richard Etir of Tokyo Kokusai University heads to New York fresh off a 1:05:31 CR on the 23.1 km Hakone Ekiden Second Stage , equivalent to a 59:50 half marathon on a rolling net uphill course. That should predict success on the tough NYC course. He'll be the main competition for newly crowned American record holder Connor Mantz , 59:17 in Houston at the end of January, with defending champ and sub-59 man Abel Kipchumba  in contention too after a 59:52 win at last year's Great North Run. Sub-27 10000 m men Mohammed Ahmed and Woody Kincaid are also debuting. Komazawa teammates Yudai Kiyama and Hibiki Murakami earned spots in New York ...