Skip to main content

MGC Race Olympic Marathon Trials Qualifier - Daiji Kawai

Daiji Kawai

age: 27
sponsor: Toenec
graduated from: Seki Shogyo H.S., Reitaku University

best time inside MGC window:
2:10:50, 11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon

PB: 2:10:50, 11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon

other PBs:
5000 m: 13:45.91 (2018) 10000 m: 28:08.52 (2018) half marathon: 1:02:45 (2019)

marathons inside MGC window (Aug. 1 2017 – April 30 2019)
11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon, 2:10:50
60th, 2018 Hokkaido Marathon, 2:28:25
42nd, 2018 Lake Biwa Marathon, 2:23:13

other major results:
5th, 2019 National Championships 10000 m, 28:43.46
3rd, 2019 Oda Memorial Meet 5000 m, 13:51.56
31st, 2019 Marugame Half Marathon, 1:02:45 – PB
8th, 2019 New Year Ekiden Fourth Stage (22.4 km), 1:05:48
3rd, 2018 Kumamoto Kosa 10-Mile Road Race, 46:15
1st, 2016 Inuyama Half Marathon, 1:03:21

Kawai is a rarity in the MGC men’s field, one of the only men who went to university in the Tokyo-centric Kanto Region but didn’t run the Hakone Ekiden. After graduating from Reitaku University he was supported by 2012 London Olympian Arata Fujiwara for a year before joining the minor Toenec team.

He has a lot of parallels with Fujiwara. Both won the Inuyama Half Marathon and had major jumps in their marathon performances after failed debuts. In Fujiwara’s case he went from 2:38 to 2:08. In Kawai’s, he ran 2:23:13 in Lake Biwa last year, bombed out with a 2:28:25 in Hokkaido in August, then broke through with a 2:10:50 back in Lake Biwa this March to make the MGC cut.

In between he was mostly on, running a 10000 m PB in November, a solid 10-mile PB in December, a decent 8th on the New Year Ekiden’s longest stage, and a half marathon PB in February. Since Lake Biwa he’s been 3rd at the Oda Memorial Meet’s 5000 m and 5th in the National Championships 10000 m.

In terms of quality Kawai is still a level or two down from the favorites to make the Olympic team, but history has shown that the people like him with a big breakthrough performance in the midst of a period of steady improvement can be the most dangerous. Kawai was named alternate for the Doha World Championships team, so in the event that someone cancels he will swap to that instead of doing the MGC Race.

Next preview: Keiko Nogami (Juhachi Ginko).

© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Takeshi Soh Reflects on 54 Years in the Sport on His Retirement as Asahi Kasei Head Coach

After 54 years at the Asahi Kasei corporate team, first as athlete and then as coach, Takeshi Soh will retire at the end of this month. Together with his twin brother Shigeru Soh they formed a duo who were icons of the Japanese marathoning world and went all the way to the Olympics. After retiring from competition Takeshi devoted himself to coaching young athletes and came to play a primary role in the leadership of Japanese long distance. His list of achievements is long, and so is the list of those he influenced and inspired. His twin Shigeru was chosen for three Olympic teams in the marathon, Montreal in 1976, Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. Takeshi was named to the Moscow and Los Angeles teams, placing 4th in L.A. to confirm his position as one of the greatest names in the sport in that era. After becoming a coach the twins helped lead Hiromi Taniguchi to gold at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships, Koichi Morishita to silver a year later at the Barcelona Olympics, and o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Evaluating the Japan Marathon Championship Series IV Awards

  The JAAF held the award ceremony for its Japan Marathon Championship Series IV last night in Tokyo, the whole thing streamed live on Youtube. The two-year series, in this case running from April, 2023 to March, 2025, scores marathoners on time and place in domestic races and high-level international races, with athletes' two best performances combining to give them their series rankings. Series winners score guaranteed places on the 2025 Tokyo World Championships team , with the top 8 women and men earning prize money: 1st: ¥6,000,000 (~$40,000 USD) 2nd: ¥3,000,000 (~$20,000) 3rd: ¥1,000,000 (~$6,700) 4th: ¥800,000 (~$5,300) 5th: ¥700,000 (~$4,700) 6th: ¥500,000 (~$3,300) 7th: ¥300,000 (~$2,000) 8th: ¥200,000 (~$1,300) Points for time are scored according to World Athletics scoring tables, with placing points based on races' designated level. Given the JAAF's financial interests in the big domestic races and the income stream from their TV broadcasts, the scoring system ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more