Skip to main content

The Voices of Average Runners on the Street as Tokyo Marathon Cancels Mass-Participation Race and Other Races Follow Suit (updated)

In the wake of the Tokyo Marathon Foundation's cancelation of its Mar. 1 mass-participation race over coronavirus concerns, other races across Japan have begun to follow Tokyo's lead.

After initially announcing that it would go ahead, the Feb. 23 Himeji Castle Marathon in Hyogo has now announced it will follow Tokyo's lead and cancel. The Neyagawa Half Marathon in Osaka announced that it will completely cancel its event the same day, which had 5,392 entrants supported by 1,350 volunteers this year. Entry fees will not be refunded, but all entrants will have the option to run next year's race for free. Also on Feb. 23, Saitama's Fukaya City Half Marathon announced it would cancel its race, saying that it would not return entry fees but would send entrants the program and entry goods and give them priority in entering next year, while Aichi's Inuyama Half Marathon canceled without specifying details, saying those will be posted on its website.

The Miura International Half Marathon, scheduled for the same day as the Tokyo Marathon in Miura, Kanagawa, also announced that it is canceling this year's 38th edition in the interest of minimizing health risks to runners, volunteers and spectators. 14,000 runners were entered. Plans for what to do about participants' entry fees will be announced later.

In Tokyo itself, the 38,000 entrants in the mass-participation race have been shut out, with the race going ahead with a field of only about 200 elite runners pursuing Olympic qualification. Entry fees to Tokyo will not be refunded, and while entrants will have priority in entering next year's race they will have to pay the entry fee again, 16,200 yen [~$150 USD] for domestic runners and 18,200 yen [~$165 USD] for international entrants.

Among the mass-participation runners who beat the odds to get into the Tokyo field and spent long hours training for it, people have shown understanding of the Foundation's decision while expressing highly mixed feelings about it. Shigeo Imai, 41, a company worker from Tokyo's western suburb of Chofu, could not hide his disappointment. In his ninth attempt he finally got through Tokyo's entry lottery this year. To help get into shape he biked the 23 km round-trip journey to his office every day, and he had already arranged for a colleague to fill in for him at work on race day. His wife and friends had planned to come into the city to cheer him on. "I'd like to at least know what they're going to do with our entry fees and charitable donations," he said.

Like Imai planning to run Tokyo for the first time, another male runner in his 30's from Tokyo's Chuo Ward commented, "It's a huge shock and I'm completely devastated." He had trained around Tokyo's Imperial Palace in pursuit of setting a PB at the Tokyo Marathon. "At the very least I'd like to have my entry fee back," he said. A woman from Kanagawa in her 30's would have made her marathon debut in Tokyo this year. "I guess there's no avoiding it getting canceled, but I'm still really disappointed that I won't get to run."

Katsuo Honda, 51, a corporate manager from Isahaya, Nagasaki who was going to have been running Tokyo for the first time in seven years, was understanding of the decision, saying, "I had already been thinking about not running due to the coronavirus' spread. The race's cancelation settled that. But at the same time, it's an Olympic year so I definitely wanted to run."

source articles:
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200219-00000014-kobenext-soci
https://bit.ly/2u7HwXq
https://bit.ly/2wjJO6u
https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/sports/202002/0013124301.shtml
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200218-00000001-mai-spo
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200218-00000045-spnannex-spo
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200218-00000047-spnannex-spo
translated and edited by Brett Larner

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Weekend Racing Roundup

  China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from  Jie He  at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country. At the Tokushima Marathon , club runner Yuhi Yamashita  won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane  winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa , 2nd in 2:49:46.  At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura  (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda  won the men's race in 2:20:08.  Chika Yokota  won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33.  Yuki Yamada  won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km.  Naoki Inoue  won the 16th r

Japan's Olympic Marathon Team Meets the Press

With renewed confidence, Japan's Olympic marathon team will face the total 438 m elevation difference hills of Paris this summer. The members of the women's and men's marathon teams for August's Paris Olympics appeared at a press conference in Tokyo on Mar. 25 in conjunction with the Japan Marathon Championship Series III (JMC) awards gala. Women's Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki (Daiichi Seimei) said she was riding a wave of motivation in the wake of the new women's national record. When she watched Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) set the record at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon on TV, Suzuki said she was, "absolutely stunned." Her coach Sachiko Yamashita told her afterward, "When someone breaks the NR, things change," and Suzuki found herself saying, "I want to take my shot." After training for a great run in Paris, she said, "I definitely want to break the NR in one of my marathons after that." Mao

Takeuchi Wins Niigata Half in Boston Tune-Up

Running in cold, windy and rainy conditions, Ryoma Takeuchi (ND Software) warmed up for April's Boston Marathon with a win at Wednesday's Niigata Half Marathon . Takeuchi sat behind Nittai University duo Susumu Yamazaki and Ryuga Ishikawa in the early stages, then made a series of pushes to pick up the pace. Each time he tucked in behind whoever went to the front, while behind them others dropped off. Before 15 km only Yamazaki and Riki Koike of Soka University were left, and when Takeuchi went to the front the last time after 15 km only Koike followed. By 16 he was gone too, leaving Takeuchi to solo it in to the win in 1:03:13 with a 17-second negative split. "This was my last fitness check before the Boston Marathon next month, and my time was right on-target," he said post-race. "Everything went as planned. I'm looking forward to racing some of the world's best in Boston, and my goal there is to place in the single digits." Just back from tr