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Showing posts with the label Hassan Boumagoul

Japan in Wanjiru - Koichi Morishita

This is part two in JRN's four-part series of interviews with the key people in Samuel Wanjiru's life in Japan.  Click here for the introduction to the series, an explanation of how it came about, and links to the other interviews.  Check back tomorrow for part three, an interview with Wanjiru's former teammates Yu Mitsuya and Masato Imai.

Barcelona Olympics marathon silver medalist Koichi Morishita is the man who showed Samuel Wanjiru how to be a marathoner, but under his coaching Wanjiru also set all of his world records from the junior 10000 m record to his three times cracking the best-ever half-marathon mark.  Six weeks after Wanjiru's death Morishita agreed to a one-on-one interview about Wanjiru's years with the Toyota Kyushu corporate team, their coach-athlete relationship, and his post-Japan marathon career.  Morishita was candid and unexpectedly introspective in his opinions of what went wrong, including his own mistakes.  In this interview he shared thing…

Moroccan Hassan Starts Over in Kyoto

http://www.kyoto-np.co.jp/article.php?mid=P2009042900039&genre=L1&area=K00

translated by Brett Larner

This summer a student runner in Kyoto will have the honor of wearing his mother country's national colors in an international competition for the first time. An alumnus of Kyoto Gaidai Nishikoto High School's track and field team, Moroccan Hassan Boumagoul (22) has been chosen for his country's team for the World Student Games, to be held July 4-9 in Serbia. Having resigned from his jitsugyodan team last summer, this spring Hassan was accepted into Kyoto's Ryokoku Junior College. "Japan suits me better than anywhere else," Hassan says.

Hassan came to Japan in 2002, running in the National High School Track and Field Championships 5000 m all three of his years at Gaidai Nishi. After graduation he joined Fukuoka-based Team Toyota Kyushu, where he trained alongside future Beijing Olympics marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru of Kenya. In May last year he a…