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Showing posts with the label Gideon Ngatuny

"If You Just Want to Buy Your Way It Will Never Succeed" - Tsutomu Akiyama Part II

Part two of a 2010 interview with Tsutomu Akiyama , one of the people responsible for bringing the first Kenyans into Japan's high school, collegiate and corporate running worlds. Read part one here . Can you talk more about World Half Marathon Championships silver medalist Philes Ongori? Well, as of April she’s leaving and going back to be based in Kenya. She’s superb up to the half marathon. She has run in the 67:30’s. At the World Half in the U.K. she ran 67:38 and came 2nd, just beating 3rd at the very end. But looking toward the marathon…she can train up to what’s necessary for the half marathon, but the marathon has to be double that. I don’t know how that’s going to turn out. I can’t say one way or the other. Looking back a bit, when she came over in high school she was running 2:23 for 800 m. The first stage of the National High School Ekiden is the same as the first stage of the National Inter-Prefectural Ekiden. On the first stage of the National High School Eki...

Discovering the Legend - Tsutomu Akiyama on Finding Wanjiru, Mogusu and More

Tsutomu Akiyama is a key figure in the history of both Japanese running and Olympic marathoning. A senior advisor to Yamanashi Gakuin University's ekiden and track and field programs and one half of the partnership responsible for beginning to bring Kenyans to Japan in the wake of Olympic medalist Douglas Wakiihuri 's arrival, Akiyama discovered and has been a mentor to the likes of marathon great Daniel Njenga , World Half Marathon silver medalist Philes Ongori , World Championships marathon medalist Tsuyoshi Ogata , Hakone Ekiden course record breaker  Mekubo Mogusu , corporate league star,  Gideon Ngatuny , multiple world-level medalist  Paul Tanui and Beijing Olympics marathon champion and winner of the legendary 2010 Chicago Marathon, Samuel Wanjiru In 2010 Akiyama gave JRN a one-on-one interview in which he talked about everything, from the human side of his athletes to problems with foreign agents, from picking a teenaged Wanjiru up at the airport during his ...