japan running news

Only 5 finals happened on the fifth day of the 2026 National High School Championships , but in the girls' pole vault Kiyora Matsuura (Kumiyama H.S.) turned in the second meet record of the championships so far. Having already cleared 4.10 m to move up to all-time high school #4 in May, Matsuura had her sights on the 4.16 m high school record. With nobody else going higher than 3.90 m Matsuura cleared 4.00 m and 4.05 m on her first attempts, then passed on 4.10 m to go straight to 4.17 m. But it wasn't to be, and her 4.05 m stood as the new MR, at least until her senior year next year. Toma Tabushi (Shiritsu Funabashi H.S.) jumped 15.64 m (+0.2) to win the boys' triple jump, Hikaru Mizuno (Yashiro H.S.) taking the boys' hammer throw with a 64.63 m on his final attempt. On the track, the 200 m titles went to Nao Yamada (Shiritsu Kashiwa H.S.) in the girls' race in 23.91 (-0.8) and Randi Tsukamoto (Hoshigaya H.S.) in 20.95 (-1.2) in the boys' race. National Hi...

Day 2 of the 2026 National High School Championships saw dominant wins in both the girls' and boys' 400 m finals, with heavy favorite Haru Balogun (Ichikawa H.S.) winning the girls' race by over a second in 53.74 and Kodai Okumura (Saikyo H.S.) taking the boys' race by almost as much in 46.82. 4th-fastest in the qualifying rounds, Aika Murai (Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S.) outran Rikka Kuroda (Sendai Ikuei H.S.), the younger sister of collegiate marathon record holder Asahi Kuroda for the win 4:23.62 to 4:24.10, Haru Azuma (Suma Gakuen H.S.) holding off Moe Imon (St. Catalina Gakuen H.S.) for 3rd in 4:24.21. Also 4th-fastest in qualifying, Sei Yoshida (Tokaidai Sapporo H.S.) took the boys' title in 3:44.31 over top-ranked Sota Iihoshi (Chiben College H.S.) and Kain Inagaki (Rakunan H.S.). Mio Toshida (Kasukabe Joshi H.S.) held off Hikari Osaka (Shiritsu Nishinomiya H.S.) by 2 seconds to win a close girls' 5000 m race walk in 22:33.27. Reon Kitamura (Raku...

4 meet records fell on the second day of the 2025 National Sports Festival in Shiga. In the junior men's pole vault , Naoya Inoue (Anan Hikari H.S.) was the only one to go higher than 4.80 m, and massively so. Inoue cleared 5.32 m on his 3rd attempt, setting a new MR and beating his closest competition by 52 cm. 800 m NR holders Rin Kubo (Higashi Osaka Keiai H.S.) and Ko Ochiai (Komazawa Univ.) duly took the 800 m wins here in MR time. Kubo won the junior women's race by over 3 seconds in 2:01.72, with Ochiai winning the senior men's race in 1:45.20. The men's race was actually decently competitive, with Mikuto Kaneko (Arcyell) and Hiroki Minamoto (NTN) going 1:46.25 and 1:46.47, and the top 4 all going under the old MR. Ochiai's success while still a teenager seems to be motivating other Japanese men in what is probably Japan's weakest track event. The other meet record came in the junior men's 100 m B-final , where Sekito Matsushita (Shizuoka H.S....