The 2025 Asian Athletics Championships kick off today in Gumi, South Korea and run through Saturday. Meet schedule, entry lists and results will be on the meet site. Day One streaming is above, with other days here.
The top tier of Japanese athletes like Ryuji Miura and Nozomi Tanaka who've already hit their qualifying marks for the Tokyo World Championships are mostly skipping the Asian Championships, giving the next tier of people a chance to get into Tokyo via an area title or score enough world rankings points to have a shot at making the Tokyo quota.
From that point of view the race of the day is the men's 10000 m. Between people who've hit the standard, qualifiers via cross country, and area champions, the only person in the quota of 27 on points is 2024 Japanese national champ Jun Kasai. He was scheduled to run but is out with injury. Next in line is India's Gulveer Singh, who missed the standard by just 0.22 with a 27:00.22 at The Ten earlier this season. Next in line after him is 2025 Japanese national champ Mebuki Suzuki, 27:20.33 at the Hachioji Long Distance Meet last November.
If either of them wins, and it doesn't look like there's anyone else currently at their level, they'll pick up the Asian title and knock Kasai out of the quota. If Bahrain's Albert Rop has a miracle comeback and beats them then they'll need enough points to pass Kasai, 14 in Singh's case and 18 in Suzuki's case. The kicker: last fall Singh raced Suzuki twice, once over 5000 m at the YACC meet in September and the other in Hachioji. Both times Singh sat on Suzuki the whole way and then kicked away for the win in an Indian record time. Suzuki showed a lot of improvement in his last kick at this year's National Championships, but it's still not in the same league. The only thing in Suzuki's favor: Singh was only decent in his last race, running 13:24.32 for 9th at the Doha Diamond League meet on May 16, far off his 12:59.77 NR in Boston in February.
Japanese athletes in action today and SB rank in field:
8:00 a.m. - Men's 20 km Race Walk
Ryo Hamanishi (3)
Kento Yoshikawa (2)
9:00 a.m. - Men's Decathlon
Yuma Maruyama (1)
Keisuke Okuda (2)
9:15 a.m. - Men's High Jump Qualification Round
Naoto Hasegawa (10)
Tomohiro Shinno (3)
9:20 a.m. - Men's 1500 m Heats
Nanami Arai (16)
Kazuto Iizawa (7)
9:40 a.m. - Men's 400 m Heats
Fuga Sato (2)
Kentaro Sato (3)
10:00 a.m. - Women's 20 km Race Walk
Ayane Yanai (3)
Yukiko Umeno (4)
10:20 a.m. - Women's 400 m Heats
Nanako Matsumoto (5)
12:00 p.m. - Women's Hammer Throw
Joy McArthur (4)
Raika Murakami (5)
2:30 p.m. - Women's 100 m Heats
Midori Mikase (2)
Aiha Yamagata (13)
2:40 p.m. - Women's Javelin Throw
Sae Takemoto (2)
Momone Ueda (5)
2:45 p.m. - Women's Triple Jump
Mariko Morimoto (5)
Maoko Takashima (7)
3:00 p.m. - Men's 100 m Heats
Akihiro Higashida (8)
Hiroki Yanagita (1)
3:40 p.m. - Men's 400 m Semi-Finals
4:05 p.m. - Women's 400 m Semi-Finals
4:20 p.m. - Men's 10000 m
Mebuki Suzuki (2)
© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Comments