japan running news

Back in Japan for the first time in 32 years and representing 60% of the world's population, with more athletes competing across all sports than at the Olympics, the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games are already underway. Athletics competition starts tomorrow and runs through Tuesday the 29th. Some of the biggest names on the entry list include: Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage (SRI) - men's javelin throw - 2026 World Ultimate Championships gold and 2026 Diamond League champion Haruka Kitaguchi (JPN) - women's javelin throw - 2026 World Ultimate Championships and 2024 Paris Olympics gold Birhanu Balew (BRN) - men's 5000 m/10000 m - 2026 Diamond League 5000 m champion Sanghyeok Woo (KOR) - men's high jump - 2025 Tokyo World Championships silver Hayato Katsuki (JPN) - men's marathon race walk - 2025 Tokyo World Championships bronze Abderrahman Samba (QAT) - men's 400 mH - 2025 Tokyo World Championships bronze Jiale Zhang (CHN) - women's hammer throw - 2025 Tokyo W...

https://www.irunfar.com/2026-iau-100k-world-championships-results-americans-courtney-olsen-charlie-lawrence-win IAU 100 km World Championships Ames, Spain, 20 Sept. 2026 complete results   Women 1. Courtney Olsen (U.S.A.) - 7:10:31 2. Miho Nakata (Japan) - 7:11:57 3. Gemma Arenas Alcazar (Spain) - 7:17:50 4. Noora Honkala (Finland) - 7:21:37 5. Nikolina Sustic-Stankovic (Croatia) - 7:21:57 6. Estefanía Unzu (Spain) - 7:22:13 7. Natasa Sustic (Croatia) - 7:22:43 8. Malory Leroy (France) - 7:24:07 9. Selina Leroy (France) - 7:26:29 10. Mirjana Simek Bilic (Croatia) - 7:27:46 ----- 21. Mikiko Ota (Japan) - 7:48:55 25. Akiko Maruichi (Japan) - 8:02:21 29. Ako Takigahira (Japan) - 8:12:20 Women's Team Scoring 1. Croatia - 22:12:26 2. Spain - 22:21:06 3. Finland - 22:46:15 Men 1. Charlie Lawrence (U.S.A.) - 6:09:25 2. Aleksandr Sorokin (Lithuania) - 6:12:41 3. Alex Milne (Great Britain) - 6:17:50 4. Dariusz Nozynski (Poland) - 6:23:47 5. Jason Pointeau (France) - 6:24:34 6. Steven Galibe...

Japan had a team of 14 at the World Athletics Road Running Championships this weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark, opting not to send any women in the road mile. That was actually where the best Japan-adjacent performance came, as Mirriam Cherop , who returned to Kenya this year after several seasons with the Kansai-based Shin Nihon Jusetsu team, took bronze in 4:25.71. The best Japanese placing was in the men's mile, where Waseda University 's Ojiro Honda was 16th in a PB of 3:57.50, 0.50 off the NR but almost 4 seconds behind what Keita Satoh ran at last weekend's Fifth Avenue Mile in New York. Top placings in the other events were all in the mid-20s, Kana Mizumoto 24th in the women's 5 km in 15:42, Rui Suzuki 28th in the men's 5 km in 13:38, Yumi Yoshikawa 25th in the women's half marathon in 1:09:34, and Yuma Nishizawa 26th in the men's half marathon in 1:01:17. In half marathon team scoring, the Japanese men were 6th and the women 8th, disappointing...

This week the JAAF announced changes to the lineup for its home team at next week's Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games . The main change announced was the withdrawal of Ririka Hironaka from the women's 10000 m, leaving only Nozomi Tanaka to do it as part of a 1500-5000-10000 triple. In theory it seems like it would be pretty easy and swap in an alternate, but apparently not. No announcement of withdrawals for Tomonori Yamaguchi , who missed June's National Championships 5000 m with injury, or high jumper Ryoichi Akamatsu , who hasn't competed since early last October and made the Asian Games team based his 8th-place finish over a year ago at the Tokyo World Championships. Complete entry lists, schedule and results are available here . The latest Japanese team lineup, with current Asian ranking limited to 2 athletes per country, and best performance in 2025-26: Men 100 m 6 - Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko) - 10.10 (+1.4) 9 - Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) - 10.06 (+1.4) 200 m 1 - Tow...

Re-upping an earlier post on Japan's team lineup for this weekend's  Copenhagen World Road Running Championships . The JAAF chose not to name any women to the team in the mile. Women 5 km Kana Mizumoto (Edion) - 15:06.98 Rina Kusu (Sekisui Kagaku) - 15:10.91 Half Marathon Yumi Yoshikawa (Canon) - 1:09:14 Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) - 1:09:20 Rina Shimizu (Noritz) - 1:09:22 Yuna Takahashi (Shimamura) - 1:09:23 Men Mile Ojiro Honda (Waseda Univ.) - 3:37.53 (1500 m) Tomoki Nakano (Toenec) - 3:37.92 (1500 m) 5 km Yota Mashiko (Waseda Univ.) - 13:20.35 Rui Suzuki (Waseda Univ.) - 13:20.64 Half Marathon Tomoya Ogikubo (Hiramatsu Byoin) - 1:00:22 Yuma Nishizawa (Toyota Boshoku) - 1:00:26 Neo Namiki (Subaru) - 1:00:29 Daisuke Sato (Chuo Univ.) - 1:00:40 © 2026 Brett Larner , all rights reserved

At some point in the last few months I discovered that both versions of the ARRS database, the static one and the searchable version , are gone. Last week David Monti posted a link to the ARRS history of an event he covered in Race Results Weekly, I guess copying and pasting a link from last year without looking at it, and that reminded me to write something about the loss of the database. The Association of Road Racing Statisticians was basically a one-man show operated from the remote Northern California shores by Ken Young . When the site existed its intro read: The Association of Road Racing Statisticians (ARRS) is an independent, non-profit organization that collects, analyses and publishes results and statistics regarding elite distance running at distances 3000m and longer...The data of ARRS is stored in the ARRS database, which has more than 1.3 million performances from more than 240,000 races by more than 95,000 elite and sub-elite distance runners worldwide...This website ...

Olympic and World champion Haruka Kitaguchi got the biggest headlines among Japanese athletes this weekend, overcoming a rough last year and a half that included injury and a coaching change to break her own javelin throw NR by over a meter and a half to win the inaugural WA Ultimate Championship in Budapest. U20 WR and Asian AR holder Ziyi Yan opened with a big 68.05, 0.67 m further than Kitaguchi's best-ever from back in 2023. That could have been the end, but Kitaguchi came back from a 61.15 m first attempt to throw a massive 68.92 m NR on her next one, ultimately enough for the win. She still has a long way to go to match the 18-year-old Yan's 71.74 m from May, but it was a clear statement that Kitaguchi is back. Back home at the National Corporate Track and Field Championships in Kyoto, women's pole vault NR holder Misaki Morota continued a solid comeback season of her own, bettering her NR from May by 1 cm with a 4.51 m on her first attempt. Morota took another 3...

1500 m U20 NR holder Keita Satoh (Nike Swoosh TC) is running this weekend's New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile , the first time that a Japanese man has been invited in the race's 45-year history. In university Sato had to change focus away from middle distance to the half marathon-scale lengths of the Hakone Ekiden stages, but since graduating in March and relocating to Flagstaff he has refocused on the 1500 m, going from 3:43.19 in April in his first 1500 m in almost 4 years to 3:38.30 over the course of 5 races. Fifth Avenue will be his last race before heading back to Japan for one more track 1500 m and some down time. Men's entries with best 1500 m times in last 3 years: Stefan Nillessen (NED) - 3:29.23 (2025) Flavien Szot (FRA) - 3:30.74 (2025) Oliver Hoare (AUS) - 3:31.07 (2024) Jake Heyward (GBR) - 3:31.18 (2026) Titouan Le Grix (FRA) - 3:31.46 (2026) Romain Mornet (FRA) - 3:31.62 (2025) Adam Spencer (AUS) - 3:31.83 (2026) Pieter Sisk (BEL) - 3:31.85 (2025) Gary Martin (...

Conditions weren't great for the last day of this year's National University Track and Field Championships either, with off-and-on heavy rain in Yokohama through most of the day. But the Chuo University men's 4x400 m relay team of Hiroto Shogomori , Kota Uematsu , Shiita Hamada and Sho Tanabe still came through with a 3:03.30 meet record for the win, 0.89 up on 2nd-placer Tsukuba University . That was under Toyo University 's 3:03.64 MR from last year, a mark that had also been the fastest-ever by a single university team. Only a mixed-school collegiate team has run faster than Chuo's winning time this year with a 3:03.20 back in 2005, but not by much. Ritsumeikan University took the women's 4x400 m in 3:36.78. Other highlights: #1-ranked Ami Takahashi (Tsukuba Univ.) took the women's 200 m in 23.79 (-0.5). Takahashi's teammate Kurumi Sugure , likewise ranked #1 in the women's 800 m, took it by over 2 seconds in 2:05.99, with Tsukuba's Hano...

Heavy rain through a lot of the day made for tough conditions for the 2nd day of the 95th National University Track and Field Championships in Yokohama, with more forecast for the final day on Monday. In a lot of the sprint and field events that held back the quality of the performances, but even so in 2 events athletes turned in meet record-breaking runs. In the men's 400 m, #3-ranked Kira Hirakawa (Toyo Univ.) and collegiate record holder Shinya Hayashi (Tsukuba Univ.) pushed each other the entire way, Hirakawa dipping for the win in 45.37 and Hayashi 2nd in 45.41. Both were way under the meet record of 45.75 set by Yuki Yamaguchi back in 2004 and tied by Julian Walsh in 2018. The other meet record came in the women's 4x100 m relay final, where MR holders Fukuoka University ran an almost identical lineup to the one that set the collegiate record of 43.91 and the MR of 44.31 last year. Rin Shibato , Mayuko Maeda and Aiha Yamagata returned from that team on the first 2 ...

There weren't any new meet records on the opening day of this year's National University Track and Field Championships in Yokohama, but some of the favorites still turned in good performances. Ranked #1 in the women's 1500 m, Airi Tajima (Juntendo Univ.) outran #3-ranked teammate Miori Kida for the win 4:14.81 to 4:17.57, with #4-ranked Mana Aiba (Daito Bunka Univ.) 3rd in 4:18.08 Juntendo took the top 2 spots in the men's 1500 m too, with #3-ranked Shuntaro Kawaguchi bettering #1-ranked teammate Takumi Nakagawa for the title 3:45.15 to 3:45.86. #5-ranked Soya Mizuno (Ritsumeikan Univ.) got past #2-ranked Koki Terada (Chuo Univ.) for 3rd in 3:46.00. The race walks saw upset wins. Ibuki Hori (Kansai Univ.) beat #2-ranked Toko Nakajima (Waseda Univ.) by 0.47 for the women's title in 21:44.38. After opening a lead late in the race Yushi Nakajima (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) got passed by Riku Kaneko (Kokushikan Univ.) in the last 200 m and finished 2nd in the ...