We're back from a short summer break. A week and a half out from the first race of the season's four World Marathon Majors races, here's a look at Japanese athletes scheduled to run. Everything right now is about qualifying for the MGC Race, the official trials race for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to be held in the fall of 2027 in Nagoya. The JAAF makes no mistake about wanting to keep its top people racing domestically where it can get a share of revenue from the TV broadcast and race operations, so anyone who decides to race overseas has to do it in a WA platinum label race and hit either 2:06:30 or 2:23:30, regardless of place, course or weather if they want to make the trials. At the same time concessions are make for domestic races, like for example the late-August Hokkaido Marathon where up to 3 men and 3 women can qualify if they go 2:12:00 or 2:32:00. As a result, you get things like last year where amateur runner Yudai Fukuda made the trials by finishing 3rd Jap...
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First Seira Fuwa gets injured early in the year and misses the World Champs, then Mao Ichiyama and Hitomi Niiya contract COVID just prior to their world championship race and now the 'in form' Honami Maeda contracts COVID too. It's hard to believe! I can just hope all the athletes mentioned recover fully and can be at their best in the very near future. I was so looking forward to watching Honami Maeda in this race. I'm gutted. I can only imagine how she must be feeling.