japan running news

On Aug. 25 the organizers of next month's Tokyo World Athletics Championships announced their plans for the medal ceremonies at the Championships. As previously announced in June along with the designs for medals, the award ceremonies will be held on a stage to be set up outside the National Stadium on its south side near the F Gate. The decision follows the groundbreaking setup that proved popular at the 2023 Budapest World Championships. The first medal ceremony will be held before the start of the evening session on the second day of the Championships, with the ceremony for the afternoon session on the final day planned for after the evening session ends. A fan photo zone where fans can interact with medalists will be set adjacent to the stage. To give children the experience of seeing the operation of a major championship behind the scenes, local junior high school students will be chosen to act as guides escorting the medalists to the stage. source article: https://www.rikujyo...

A native of Shimabara, Nagasaki, Ryota Kondo , 25, visited Nagasaki City Hall ahead of September's Tokyo World Championships where he will represent Japan in the marathon. At February's Osaka Marathon Kondo set a debut marathon national record of 2:05:39, finishing 2nd overall and in the top Japanese spot to earn himself a place on the Japanese national team for the World Championships. "I like to go hiking in Oehara, or up the steep slopes in Nagayo and Nameshi," he told city officials. "Climbing steep hills strengthens my legs and hips." At the Tokyo World Championships the men's marathon will start at 8:00 a.m. on September 15. The race is likely to happen in lingering late-summer heat. "I tend to be pretty positive about things," Kondo said. "I think the hot conditions will prevent a lot of other athletes from performing up to their full ability. The way I see it, when things get tough it's an opportunity." Kondo is the third ...

  On Nov. 15 the East Japan Corporate Federation announced that 10000 m national champion and Paris Olympian  Jun Kasai  (Asahi Kasei) and Budapest World Championships team member  Ren Tazawa  (Toyota) have both withdrawn from the 10000 m at the Nov. 23 Hachioji Long Distance meet. This year's Hachioji Long Distance features a special heat set up to target the 27:00.00 qualifying standard for next year's Tokyo World Championships. Along with Kasai and Tazawa, national record holder Kazuya Shiojiri  (Fujitsu) and other top-level Japanese talent are scheduled to compete. After last January's New Year Ekiden , Tazawa sustained an injury that forced him to miss May's National Championships 10000 m and other races including the Paris Olympics. At the end of September he ran 13:36.99 for 5th at the Yogibo Athletics Challenge Cup meet, but, he said, "My balance felt off and the back of my left knee hurt." In Kasai's case, after winning the national title in M...

The 2023 Mizuno Sports Mentor Awards recognizing excellence in coaching were held Apr. 23 in Tokyo. Toyo University assistant coach and race walking coach Mizuho Sakai was given a gold award, the program's highest honor, and expressed her thanks and joy in a speech at the award ceremony. The coach of 2023 Budapest World Championships men's 35 km race walk bronze medalist Masatora Kawano , Sakai said, "This is an incredible honor and I'm truly grateful. As a child I wanted to be in the sporting world and I've spent my life in that world. My end goal was always to play a supporting role for other athletes, so I'm honored to be recognized in this way." Sakai's husband Toshiyuki Sakai , head coach of Toyo's three-time Hakone Ekiden champion team, attended the awards gala with her and was also introduced to the audience. After bowing he took a seat in front of her and watched with warmth as she received recognition for her outstanding work. The Mizun...

After being provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) on Nov. 30 last year following a positive test for triamcinolone acetonide, Rwandan marathoner John Hakizimana has been handed a two-year suspension beginning Oct. 27, 2023. Additionally, Hakizimana loses all results from Aug. 27, 2023 on, meaning the cancelation of his 9th-place finish in the Budapest World Championships marathon. As a result, the places of all three Japanese men in the Budapest marathon will improve one position. Originally 12th, Ichitaka Yamashita (Mitsubishi Juko) moves up to 11th, Kenya Sonota (JR Higashi Nihon) from 35th to 34th, and Kazuya Nishiyama (Toyota) from 42nd to 41st. Due to the change in Yamashita's position, the results of the JMC Series III running from April, 2022 to March, 2024 have also changed. The improvement from 12th to 11th scores Yamashita an additional 10 points, enough to move him from his original 6th-place position to 4th. Original 4th-placer Yusuke Nis...

On Mar. 26 the JAAF board of directors met to finalize a variety of issues for the upcoming year. One topic was the bonuses to be paid to medalists at this summer's Paris Olympics. Gold medalists will receive 3 million yen [~$19,800 USD] , silver medalists 2 million yen [~$13,200] , and bronze medalists 1 million yen [~$6,600] . Athletes who finish 4th through 8th in finals will receive from 800,000 yen to 400,000 yen [~$5300 to ~$2650] . All amounts are the same as those that were offered for last summer's World Championships. For relays, all athletes who compete during the heats or final will receive half the above amounts. At the 2004 Athens Olympics gold medalists received a 5 million yen bonus [~$45,000 USD at the exchange rate at that time] . For the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics that was increased to 10 million yen [~$93,000 in 2008 and ~$125,000 in 2012] . For the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and 2021 Tokyo Olympics it was further increased to 20 millio...

The World Athletics Championships wrapped up August 27 in Budapest after 9 days of competition. Japan earned only one gold and one bronze medal, but it had a record 11 top-8 placings, many in events where Japan has typically lagged behind the rest of the world. After the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the JAAF set about on a program to develop "unwavering athletes" in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics, raising the level of the sport by developing athletes who can perform reliably at the international level. Women’s javelin gold medalist Haruka Kitaguchi , 25, represents the kind of athlete the JAAF is looking for, along with first-ever World Championships 110 m hurdles finalist Shunsuke Izumiya , 23, 5th in Budapest, and 3000 m steeplechase 6th-placer Ryuji Miura , 21. All three were near the top of the world rankings going into Budapest and performed up to ability there. All of them show the "unshakability" the JAAF is pushing. All competed in Diamond League meets this seas...

The women's marathon at the World Championships used to be a fairly reliable source of medals or at least top 8 finishes, but as the first race on Day 8 in Budapest showed those days are slipping farther and farther away. 9th last year in Oregon, Mizuki Matsuda was the top Japanese woman again this time at 13th in 2:29:15, starting slow before passing teammates Rika Kaseda and Sayaka Sato but unable to break into the top 8. Kaseda was 19th in 2:31:53 and Sato 20th in 2:31:57, the medals going to Ethiopians Amane Beriso and Gotytom Gebreslase in 2:24:23 and 2:24:34, and fast-closing Moroccan Fatima Ezzahra Gardadi in 2:25:17. The formerly Japan-based Rosemary Wanjiru and Selly Chepyego Kaptich were the top two placers for Kenya at 6th and 7th in 2:26:42 and 2:27:09. With that down, Japan's only other real medal shot was in the men's 4x100 m final where it was one of five teams who could realistically place on the podium. Over the first three legs Japan was more or l...

When Mongolia's Ser-Od Bat-Ochir  ran his first World Championships marathon in 2003 George Bush Jr. was in his first term and Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" was at the top of the charts. He's run every Olympic and World Championships marathon since then, all 15, and tomorrow does #16 in Budapest. He's an unsung hero of the sport, and the New York Times' Scott Cacciola  tells his story: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/26/sports/ser-od-bat-ochir-mongolia-marathon.html?unlocked_article_code=tCG44J-iVn5bRvTp8Od9VzH33-3gzX2oAaFl7wGlaiZz8oemVisp3K_u2-UBFfIbag_kgKEITYJSJbyJkRfkqUxQZD3nORmRusvuvRY_J-489inBLKKbTFGeVJzcwYCqcJl-ZBz6oOZnUjt4iLpnyIKvSB-LEIwOhiOqHGzpt2dpgdOEmnaRrTYxIwBQMrtDcT_HpRbQ6CEOYDehokPfkOZRBG-DvAljpvOIE94DHlQR7kXsMop7uEGyBGTAMYCwtgs3465VXhu8R5AmwDqxY7L9SJ03o5J-udMfSCin35q6dfpDqplLajZSNCSuW2zMNuIKcm8ntqDEuuYE2QCfSv3UYpfZmWvNwpFz&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare photo © 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Haruka Kitaguchi lived up to her #1 in the world ranking with a last-second comeback to take gold on the 7th day of the Budapest World Championships . Stunningly consistent with her first five throws all between 61.78 m and 63.00 m, Kitaguchi sat in 4th place just out of the medals when she stepped up for her 6th and final attempt. Australian Mackenzie Little and Latvian Anete Kocina were just ahead at 63.38 m and 63.18 m, but with Colombia's Flor Denis Ruiz Hurtado having opened with a 65.47 m area record it would take something special for Kitaguchi to move into the top spot. And that's exactly what she delivered. Kitaguchi threw 66.73 m, the second-furthest of her career and just 31 cm off her month-old national record, right when it mattered. With that she stepped into the history books as the first Japanese woman ever to win a World Championships gold medal in an event other than the marathon. Back home there were immediate calls for a national holiday to be declared. ...

  Day 6 of the Budapest World Championships started with Japan getting onto the medal board for the first time as one of its best individual chances came through. All three Japanese men in the 35 km race walk went out with the lead group and stayed there until just past 20 km, where 2021 50 km national champion Satoshi Maruo lost contact. 2023 35 km national champ Tomohiro Noda lasted another 8 km before dropping, leaving last year's Oregon silver medalist Masatora Kawano in contention for another medal as the pack dwindled. By 31 km it was down to just Kawano, last year's 4th-placer Brian Pintado of Ecuador, and 20 km gold medalist Alvaro Martin of Spain. Kawano dropped back with 2 km to go, Martin pulling away to take a second gold in a 2:24:30 national record and Pintado getting onto the medal stand with a 2:24:34 area record for silver. Kawano finished with a 2:25:12 SB for bronze, Japan's first medal of any kind in a World Championships that looks set to produce ...

  None of the finals on Day 5 of the Budapest World Championships featured any Japanese athletes, but there were good performances in qualifying rounds in both the morning and evening sessions. First up for the day, Tomoya Karasawa didn't turn in one of the good ones, failing to clear the opening height in the men's pole vault qualifying round. Japan's best prospect for an individual medal outside of race walking, Haruka Kitaguchi was the first woman in the javelin throw and one of only seven to clear the auto-qualifying mark of 61.50 m, throwing 63.27 m. Marina Saito managed only 58.95 m for 15th in the first round, just 71 cm short of making the qualifying bracket of twelve. Men's long jumpers Yuki Hashioka , Hiromichi Yoshida and Shotaro Shiroyama were all off their game in the opening round, Hashioka jumping best with a credible 7.94 m -0.2 m/s but short of the 8.00 m that proved necessary for qualification. Yoshida jumped 7.60 m +1.2 m/s and Shiroyama only 7....

After missing the final in Oregon last year 3000 m steeplechase national record holder Ryuji Miura built on his 7th-place 2021 Olympic debut with a 6th-place finish at the Budapest World Championships. Miura started slow and moved up throughout the race, getting as high as 5th when ahead of him a fall on the first obstacle after the bell brought bronze into tantalizingly close range. But he couldn't quite close it, and just steps before the finish he was run down by New Zealand's George Beamish , dropping to 6th in 8:13.70 with Beamish 5th in 8:13.46. Ryoma Aoki , who beat Miura to the punch as the first Japanese man to qualify for a World Championships 3000 mSC final in 20 years, was 14th in 8:24.77. Olympic and defending World champion Soufiane El Bakkali was unstoppable again, winning in 8:03.53. Flawless in the men's high jump qualifying round, Ryoichi Akamatsu struggled to get into his rhythm in the final. After making 2.20 m and 2.25 on his first attempt, Akamatsu r...

  Shunsuke Izumiya was one of Japan's few individual medal possibilities at the Budapest World Championships , and on Day 3 of the championships he ran like that was a true statement. After a 13.33 +0.5 m/s for 2nd in his 110 m hurdles opening heat, Izumiya stepped up with a 13.16 -0.2 m/s to win his semifinal, making him Japan's first-ever Worlds 110 mH finalist and putting him at 3rd among the eight finalists. From there he needed another step up to get into the medals, but with a 13.19 +0.0 m/s he finished only 5th as Americans Grant Holloway and Daniel Roberts took gold and bronze in 12.96 and 13.09, and Jamaican Hansle Parchment silver in 13.07. In the men's 400 mH semifinals, Kazuki Kurokawa ran a PB of 48.58, the fastest time by a Japanese man in 11 years and good for #6 on the all-time Japanese list and #10 on the all-time Asian list. But it wasn't enough to get him into the final, as Kurokawa placed 4th in SF2, 0.19 short of qualifying on time. The women...

  Following up on breakthrough performances at last month’s Asian Championships , the Japanese men made the 400 m heats the event of Day 2 at the Budapest World Championships for the Japanese team. In Heat 1 Kentaro Sato got it rolling with a 44.77 for 2nd, breaking the 32-year-old NR by 0.01 seconds and saying post-race that he’d go for more in the next rounds. Fuga Sato followed that with a 44.97 PB for 2nd in Heat 4, becoming just the 3rd Japanese man ever under 45 seconds. Joseph Nakajima didn’t quite match that level but with a 45.15 for 3rd in Heat 5 made it 3/3 for qualification for the semifinals. Former NR holder Abdul Hakim Sani Brown tied his old NR with a 9.97 +0.3 m/s in the men’s 100 m semifinals, then took 6th in the final in 10.04 +0.0 m/s. That was one place better than his 7th last year in Oregon, the first time a Japanese man had ever made a Worlds final in the 100 m. But although he was disappointed with his performance after his excellent semi, with Americ...

The Budapest World Championships got off to a rocky start for the Japanese team as it came up empty-handed in the opening event in one of its two best shots at a medal. Silver medalist in the last two global championships, Koki Ikeda took the men's 20 km race walk out hard only to fade abruptly at 15 km and finish 15th in 1:19:44. Two-time defending world champion Toshikazu Yamanishi faded even earlier, ultimately landing 24th overall and 4th out of the four Japanese men in the race in 1:21:39. 24-year-old Yuta Koga took the top Japanese spot at 12th in his World Championships debut with a 1:19:02 season best, 1:15 out of the medals in a race that saw gold medalist Alvaro Martin of Spain clock a world-leading 1:17:32 and 2nd through 6th set new national records. Eiki Takahashi was 21st in 1:20:25. Fresh from doing her final training in St. Moritz, women's 5000 m NR holder Ririka Hironaka bookended the day with a good comeback run in the 10000 m after a long season of rec...

Update: 24 hours after announcing its team for the Budapest World Championships, the JAAF announced a list of 5 additional men, 8 additional women, and 1 women's double. The numbers below have been updated to include them. Two big announcements in the last week from the JAAF of its rosters for this month's Budapest World Championships and next month's Riga World Road Running Championships. 28 women, 48 men and 35 officials make up the Budapest team, with multiple winners from last month's Asian Championships, national record holders, and at least two real medal prospects in women's javelin throw world leader Haruka Kitaguchi  and men's 20 km race walk defending champion Toshikazu Yamanishi . Especially on the women's side, a lot of athletes on the cusp of making the quotas for their event didn't get there, but a few did, like Asian 10000 m champ Ren Tazawa , pictured above with coach Hiroaki Oyagi  and 1:00:08 half marathoner Tomoki Ota  in St. Moritz, S...

Pretty much as expected, last week's Bangkok Asian Athletics Championships, where Japan dominated the medal count , were an easy point grab for a lot of Japanese athletes that boosted their positions in the qualifying quota for August's Budapest World Championships . Which isn't to say that there weren't some great performances, like Sumire Hata 's 6.97 m +0.5 m/s women's long jump NR and Kentaro Sato 's all-time Japanese #2 45.00 in the 400 m. But for a lot of people, the ACC were a last-minute back door into the rankings. If you're not familiar with the qualifying system for Worlds, it basically works like this. Each event has a designated number of qualifying spots, in most cases around 40. World-level champions and people who hit qualifying marks automatically make it. The rest of the quota for a given event is filled up in order of athletes' world rankings score , made up of points earned based on performance level, placing, and competition lev...

There's still over a month to go until the qualifying deadline for August's Budapest World Championships . As it stands right now eight women and seventeen men have been named to the team based on the primary criteria of having the qualifying standard and having placed top three at this year's National Championships or the special criteria in events like relays and the marathon. But with a lot of Japanese athletes comfortably inside their event's quota for qualification based on world rankings those numbers will at least double by the July 30 deadline.  A quick guide to the most likely candidates for making the final team and those realistically in range of getting into the quota is below. Numbers after event headers are the current quota cutoff score for that event. Numbers after athletes' names are the current world ranking score for anyone who doesn't have the standard in their event. For athletes who do have the standard, their current rank out of the numbe...

This weekend's main event on the Japanese calendar is Saturday's Oda Memorial Meet in Hiroshima , a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze meet. Streaming starts at 10:30 a.m. local time, with the first main field final happening at 11:45 and the first one on the track at 14:15. Check the full meet schedule here . Entry lists are here . Track event previews: Women's 1500 m Final - 14:15 No Japanese women have cleared the Budapest World Championships standard of 4:03.50, but four are currently in the quota of 56. Three of them, Yume Goto (Uniqlo), Mizuki Michishita (Wacoal) and Saki Katagihara (Tsukuba Univ.) are entered, along with Tokyo Olympian Ran Urabe (Sekisui Kagaku) who's looking for enough points to break into the top 56. Goto is closest to the standard at 4:09.41, but realistically this race will be mostly about points. Men's 1500 m Final - 14:25 The four fastest men in the 1500 m, NR holder Kazuki Kawamura (Toenec), Nanami Arai (Honda), Keisuke Mor...