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Musembi and Yamaguchi Win Hokkaido Marathon, Five Qualify for Olympic Marathon Trials



Sapporo's Hokkaido Marathon is always a key developmental race on the Japanese calendar, giving top-level people experience training for and running a summer marathon, and in some recent years serving as a route to the MGC Race, Japan's Olympic marathon trials. That was the case in the race's return this year after cancelations in 2020 and 2021, with four men and one woman making the cut for the the 2024 Olympics MGC in September next year.

The top 3 Japanese men had to clear 2:14 and 4th-6th needed 2:12 or better to make it. Pacers took a lead group of almost 50 through halfway on a steady pace around 2:10:30 in good conditions by summertime Sapporo standards, cool and thinly cloudy. Just past the half mark, debuting college student Luka Musembi (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) took off, taking his projected finish down to mid-2:09 and gapping the rest of the field. Dominic Nyairo (NTT Nishi Nihon) was the next to make a move, closing to within 10 seconds of Musembi but unable to catch him once Musembi got onto the Hokkaido University campus late in the race and took advantage of the corners familiar from last summer's Olympic marathon to check on Nyairo's position and compensate.

Musembi won in 2:10:49, a quality time for Sapporo and all smiles in the home straight. An all-Japanese chase quartet ran Nyairo down in the last 2 km, and with a hard kick another debuting college student, Yugo Kashiwa (Toyo Univ.) took the top Japanese spot at 2nd in 2:11:41. Kashiwa and 3rd-5th placers Masaru Aoki (Kanebo), Ryo Matsumoto (Toyota) and Takeru Yamaguchi (Nishitetsu) all cleared the MGC time standards, bringing the number of male qualifiers to date to 33. Kashiwa's Toyo teammate Taiga Seino just missed out in his own debut, the 5th Japanese runner home but at 2:12:20 just short of the 2:12:00 requirement.

The women's race was hard-hit by withdrawals, with two of its top three entrants pulling out with COVID and its 5th-best runner also a DNS with an ankle injury. That left 2:23:05 runner Natsumi Matsushita (Tenmaya) as the favorite, and with an entourage of at least a dozen amateur men she went out on 2:27 pace, well under the 2:32 and 2:30 MGC standards for the top 6. At 10 km she had a lead of more than 30 seconds over Yui Okada (Otsuka Seiyaku) and Nami Aoki (Iwatani Sangyo), but over the next 10 km that dropped to just 4 seconds. Then near halfway everything changed.

With just a 2:36:28 best Aoki dropped Okada and went by Matsushita on the outside of the pack of men. At almost the same time, club athlete and Tokyo Paralympic guide runner Haruka Yamaguchi (AC Kita) appeared from nowhere, splitting 17:30 from 20 to 25 km and running down both Okada and Matsushita. Seconds later she caught Aoki, resting up momentarily and then attacking and getting 6 seconds in front of Aoki by 30 km.

The win looked secure, but in her recent marathons Yamaguchi, who ran her last sub-2:30 in January, 2020, has had trouble keeping it together after 30 km. With a 2:30:09 projected finish at 30 km the sub-2:32 MGC standard was in reach, but Yamaguchi was determined to get back under 2:30. With the help of two amateur men she split 17:34 from 30 to 35 km, then got into an entertaining duel with her friend, Tokyo Paralympics 1500 m silver medalist and 5000 m bronze medalist Shinya Wada (Nagase) and his guide runner, over the last 7 km. Repeatedly passing each other all the way to the finish line, the battle of surges carried Yamaguchi in to the win and Olympic trials qualification in 2:29:52, a rare sub-2:30 in Hokkaido and done with a 38-second negative split.

Post-race Yamaguchi said her training and recent races, including May's Ottawa Marathon and July's Gold Coast Marathon, hadn't gone well, but that she had been totally focused on qualifying for the MGC Race in Hokkaido and was relieved to have done it. A longtime holdout on making the jump to supershoes, having run her half marathon PB of 1:09:50 in April in thin ASICS Sortie Magics, this time Yamaguchi wore ASICS Metaspeed Edge. The win marked her first successful race in thicker shoes. Asked about the race with Wada she laughed and told JRN, "I lost! He got me fair and square."

Aoki was 2nd in 2:33:32, a PB by almost 3 minutes but a minute and a half short of what she needed for MGC qualification, with Okada 3rd in 2:36:00. That meant only one addition to the list of women's qualifiers, now standing at 19. Matsushita suffered heavily over the 2nd half, dropping to 10th in 2:50:44. With college students taking the top two spots in the men's race and a mid-30s club runner winning the women's race, in a way this year's Hokkaido Marathon was the kind of spank to the corporate system that hasn't happened since the current generation of marathoners got moving. Here's to more of it.

Wada was the winner of the men's race in the visually impaired division, just beating Yamaguchi to the line in 2:29:49. Tokyo Paralympics gold medalist Misato Michishita (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) won the women's division in 3:07:23.

Hokkaido Marathon

Sapporo, Hokkaido, 28 August 2022

Women
1. Haruka Yamaguchi (AC Kita) - 2:29:52 - MGC
2. Nanami Aoki (Iwatani Sangyo) - 2:33:32 - PB
3. Yui Okada (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:36:00
4. Yuko Kikuchi (Hokuren) - 2:37:49
5. Akane Sekino (Comodi Iida) - 2:42:23
6. Miharu Shimokado (SID Group) - 2:44:06
7. Chizuru Oi (Nara-X) - 2:46:44
8. Hodaka Shimizu (Nara-X) - 2:50:05 - debut
9. Yuki Toyoda (Ehime Ginko) - 2:50:26 - debut
10. Natsumi Matsushita (Tenmaya) - 2:50:44

Men
1. Luka Musembi (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) - 2:10:49 - debut
2. Yugo Kashiwa (Toyo Univ.) - 2:11:41 - debut, MGC
3. Masaru Aoki (Kanebo) - 2:11:44 - MGC
4. Ryo Matsumoto (Toyota) - 2:11:51 - MGC
5. Takeru Yamaguchi (Nishitetsu) - 2:11:55 - MGC
6. Taiga Seino (Toyo Univ.) - 2:12:20 - debut
7. Dominic Nyairo Omare (NTT Nishi Nihon) - 2:12:28
8. Takumi Komatsu (NTT Nishi Nihon) - 2:13:34 - debut
9. Takumi Kiyotani (Chugoku Denryoku) - 2:13:46
10. Ryo Hashimoto (GMO) - 2:14:08
11. Naoki Koyama (Honda) - 2:14:20
12. Kazuki Muramatsu (Sumitomo Denko) - 2:14:49
13. Mizuki Higashi (Aisan Kogyo) - 2:14:54
14. Kento Nishi (Osaka Gas) - 2:14:55 - debut
15. Yuichi Yasui (Toyota) - 2:15:42
16. Kazuya Azegami (Toyota) - 2:16:24
17. Taichi Murakami (Toyo Univ.) - 2:16:34 - debut
18. Toshiki Sadakata (Mitsubishi Juko) - 2:16:42
19. Tsubasa Ichiyama (Komori Corp.) - 2:17:03
20. Kei Tsuboi (Konica Minolta) - 2:17:49 - debut
21. Tatsunori Hamasaki (Nanji AC) - 2:17:50
22. Shogo Kanezane (Chugoku Denryoku) - 2:17:54
23. Shun Yuzawa (SG Holdings) - 2:18:24
24. Junichi Ushiyama (City Runner) - 2:18:39
25. Tomoki Yasuda (Kyudenko) - 2:18:49 - debut
26. Taiyo Watanabe (Togami Denki) - 2:19:04 - debut
27. Ryoichi Matsuo (Asahi Kasei) - 2:19:13
28. Yusuke Ogura (Yakult) - 2:19:24
29. Takashi Soma (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:19:38 - debut
30. Koki Takada (Sumitomo Denko) - 2:19:49

© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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Stefan said…
Do you think there is more behind Natsumi Matsushita's 2:50:44 time? It's a performance that has me scratching my head. Big congrats to the winner, Haruka Yamaguchi and a very good run and PB by Nanami Aoki. I'm not sure Aoki can qualify for the MGC in her upcoming marathons but it does give her a glimmer of hope being fairly close this time around. Her half marathon PB is 1:12:33 in April this year! Hmm, maybe if she runs in 'super' shoes and adapts well to them she'll gain those missing couple of minutes to qualify or runs in cooler, more favorable conditions? In any case, I'll be interested to see how she does in her next marathon. By the way, I thought the coverage was very good on the livestream.
August 28, 2022 at 2:08 PM
Stefan said…
As a further comment, I just read Natsumi Matsushita's post race twitter entry (Google translated). Seems like someone took her drink at the 20k mark and she had a pretty bad blister on her left pinky toe (which she photographed). I think she probably should stay away from the Hokkaido Marathon in the future. The last time she ran 5 years ago was a DNF and I guess this time she just didn't want to DNF so ran it till the end regardless of the time.
August 28, 2022 at 2:17 PM
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