Komatsu, Nakaya, Hironaka and Tanaka Lead Japan's Team for World XC

Japan has sent a roster of 22 athletes to this weekend's World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, full squads for both junior races and the senior men's race, a team of only four for the senior women's race, and giving the mixed relay a miss.

The Senior Men's team is young but one of the better in recent years, led by towering national champion Yuta Bando (Hosei Univ.). Yohei Komatsu played a key role in Tokai University's first-ever Hakone Ekiden win in January, breaking the decades-old Eighth Stage course record to put Tokai into the lead. Yuhi Nakaya (Waseda University) was the star 1st-year on the Hakone circuit this year, Waseda head coach Yutaka Sagara saying that he think Nakaya has the potential to be better than multi-national record holder and Waseda alumnus Suguru Osako. Following Hakone Nakaya spent time training for World XC in Kenya.

The Senior Women's lineup is thin. Six of the top eight placers at Nationals were already on the Japanese national team for April's Doha Asian Championships, and of them only national champion Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) and 8th-place Yui Yabuta (Otsuka Seiyaku) are opting to double. 6th and 7th-placers Yukina Ueda (Tsukuba Univ.) and Rika Kaseda (Meijo Univ.) will fill the others' spots to give the women the bare number for team scoring.

For Tanaka, the 3000 m gold medalist at last summer's World U120 Championships it will be her longest race to date and international debut in a senior race. It will also have personal significance. Ten years ago when she was 9 years old, her mother Chihiro Tanaka won the 2009 Copenhagen Marathon. Nozomi grew up with the image of the far-off land of Denmark in her mind and the goal of someday running there. Now a national champion at age 19, she'll get her chance this weekend as the leader of the senior women's national team.

The always-strong U20 Women's squad and sometimes-strong U20 Men's squad are solid, each featuring the top six from its race at Nationals led by junior national champions Ririka Hironaka (Nagasaki Shogyo H.S.) and Jun Kasai (Kansai Soka H.S.). It's been a few years since the U20 women won a team medal but given their history of success at scoring bronze they should be in the race for a team medal.

IAAF World Cross Country Championships

Japanese National Team
Aarhus, Denmark, 3/31/19
complete team listing

Senior Men's 10 km
Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota) - 28:29.23 (10000 m)
Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) - 28:31.06 (10000 m)
Kosei Yamaguchi (Aisan Kogyo) - 28:34.19 (10000 m)
Yohei Komatsu (Tokai Univ.) - 28:35.63 (10000 m)
Yuta Bando (Hosei Univ.) - 28:44.87 (10000 m)
Yuhi Nakaya (Waseda Univ.) - 29:07.07 (10000 m)

Senior Women's 10 km
Rika Kaseda (Meijo Univ.) - 32:51.98 (10000 m)
Yukina Ueda (Tsukuba Univ.) - 33:34.70 (10000 m)
Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) - 15:15.80 (5000 m)
Yui Yabuta (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 16:22.54 (5000 m)

U20 Men's 8 km
Jun Kasai (Kansai Soka H.S.)
Issei Sato (Yachiyo Shoin H.S.)
Ryuto Igawa (Kyushu Gakuin H.S.)
Tetta Shiratori (Saitama Sakae H.S.)
Mebuki Suzuki (Saku Chosei H.S.)
Taiga Nakanishi (Kanazawa Ryukoku H.S.)

U20 Women's 6 km
Ririka Hironaka (Nagasaki Shogyo H.S.)
Ayuka Kazama (Narita H.S.)
Chika Kosakai (Narita H.S.)
Miku Sakai (Kitakyushu Municipal H.S.)
Hikari Onishi (Suma Gakuen H.S.)
Hazuki Doi (Suma Gakuen H.S.)

© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon

On Apr. 9 the Kinki Region Bureau of Health, Labor and Welfare's Drug Control Division arrested Matthew Inglis Fox , 38, an Australian business owner of no known fixed address, on charges of violating the importation regulations of the Narcotics Control Act by smuggling tablets containing marijuana elements from the United States. The suspect had entered Japan in February to run in the Osaka Marathon . The suspect was arrested on suspicion of smuggling approximately 12 pills containing marijuana by sending them from a U.S. airport to Osaka's Kansai Airport using an international courier service on Feb. 19. The Osaka branch of the Customs Service discovered the tablets in arriving cargo and suspected them to be narcotics. Customs contacted the Narcotics Control Division, which then began its investigation of the case. According to the Narcotics Control Division, the suspect denies the charges. Translator's note: Fox, who received a lifetime ban from the Ageo City Half Mara...

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