japan running news

Avoiding the worst of the typhoon that caused the season-opening national-level high school ekidens and other events to be canceled over the weekend, the National Sports Festival continued through Tuesday after day one and day two of athletics competition.

National junior records fell in the women's 5000 m racewalk, where Nanako Fujii (Edion) took 2nd overall in 21:24.40, and the junior men's 110 m hurdles, where Ko Tawada (Ogaki Shogyo H.S.) ran 13.31 (+1.5 m/s) for the win. Tawada also broke the meet record, one of four to be set over the final three days. Along with Tawada's mark, women's 5000 m racewalk winner Kumiko Okada (Bic Camera) set a new meet record of 21:08.97, Takumi Murashima (Fuji Pref. Sports Assoc.) set a senior men's 800 m meet record of 1:47.45, with his teammate Taio Kanai (Fukui Pref. Sports Assoc.) breaking the senior men's 110 m hurdles record in 13.46 (+1.2 m/s).



In distance action the highlight was the junior women's 3000 m, where…

Battered by the winds of the passing Typhoon #25, Jakarta Asian Games 100 m bronze medalist Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) ended a long season with a national title in the senior men's 100 m on the second day of the Fukui National Sports Festival. A 5.2 m/s headwind meant there was no chance of Yamagata achieving his goal of finally breaking 10 seconds on the same track where Yoshihide Kiryu did it last year, but Yamagata duly dispatched rivals Yuki Koike (ANA) and Takumi Kuki (NTN) to take the win in 10.58.

The wind was almost as much of an issue in the senior women's 100 m, where Nodoka Seko (Crane) won in 12.21 (-2.8 m/s), and the junior races. Senior women's discus throw winner Nanaka Kori (Kyushu Kyoritsu  Univ.) doubled back with a win in the shot put, throwing 15.84 m. Junior high schooler Asuka Ishimatsu (Hamanomiya J.H.S.) beat older competition to win the junior women's 1500 m in 4:26.07, while Aaron Clay (Soyo H.S.) took the longest men's event of the day, the …

3000 m world U20 champion Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) added another championships win to her resume, outrunning the field in the senior women's 5000 m to take the Fukui National Sports Festival 5000 m title on the opening day of athletics competition.

Off a slow first 1000 m Tanaka and rival Tomomi Musembi Takamatsu (Meijo Univ.) , both first-years in university, emerged after 4000 m to contend for the win in a sprint battle over the last lap. As at July's World U20 Championships Tanaka had the superior closing speed, winning in 15:34.22 to Takamatsu's 15:35.47.

Keiko Nogami '(Juhachi Ginko) made a quick turnaround from her silver medal in August's Jakarta Asian Games marathon to take 3rd in 15:37.28. Takamatsu's older sister Nozomi Musembi Takamatsu (Tokyo T&F Assoc.) dropped out midway through the race.
National Sports Festival Athletics Day One Highlights9.98 Stadium, Fukui, 10/5/18
complete results

Senior Women's 5000 m Final
1. Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) - …

72,000 paris of eyes followed a lone 19-year-old Waseda University student as he circled the track at the Olympic Stadium with effortless grace. The date was October 10, 1964, the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics. The runner was Yoshinori Sakai, the final Olympic torchbearer. Step by step he climbed the 182 stairs and, extending his right arm, ignited the flame that burst forth from the Olympic cauldron. Below him spread a sea of multicolored uniforms, and beyond the assembled teams stretched the horizons of a Tokyo in a time before modern high rise buildings. "It was the best seat in the house," Sakai recalled.

Sakai was born in Miyoshi, Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 just an hour and a half after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The perfect symbol of recovery from defeat, the foreign media dubbed him "Atomic Boy," but Sakai told foreign journalists, "The war has nothing to do with me. Please look at who I am now, today, not at the past."

Sakai b…

Key players in Hyogo Prefecture's first National Women's Ekiden in 14 years in January, following their graduation from Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. at the end of this month Nozomi Tanaka and Yume Goto will join a club team at the start of the spring season. Both have enrolled at Doshisha University where they will study in the Sports Health Science Department but will run for the ND 28 Athlete Club based in Amagasaki.

Tanaka is the all-time #2 Japanese high school girl over 3000 m with a best of 8:54.27 and beat a field of Kenyan student runners to win last fall's National Sports Festival 3000 m. Goto won the Sixth Stage at the National Women's Ekiden and took 4th in 1500 m at the National Sports Festival.



Regarding their decision to join a club team, Tanaka and Goto commented, "Ccorporate leaguers and university runners seem like they're focused on ekidens, so we've chosen a way that'll give us more freedom to run track." Neither will join the Doshisha…

Keiko Nogami, star runner of the Juhachi Ginko women's ekiden team, will represent Japan in the 16th Asian Marathon Championships Nov. 26 in Dongguan, China. Excited about her first time wearing the Japanese national colors, Nogami said, "I've been given a great opportunity. I'm really targeting a domestic race next year, but since I'm running this one I'll be aiming for the top."

Nogami's training this season has been going well and she is in good shape. At October's Ehime National Sports Festival she finished 3rd in the women's 5000 m, and later the same month at the National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships qualifying race she took 2nd on its toughest stage, the 10.7 km Third Stage, just 2 seconds from winning it.

Nogami was selected for the Asian Marathon Championships based on her results including August's Hokkaido Marathon, where she finished 2nd in 2:30:11 in just her fourth career marathon. The race takes place the same …

The 2017 National Sports Festival took place over the long weekend, the last major track meet on the Japanese calendar as ekiden season gets into full swing. This year saw one of the greatest women's 3000 m races and certainly the best high school 3000 m ever held on Japanese soil, as 18-year-old Nozomi Tanaka (Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S.) led five high school women under nine minutes to win in 8:54.27.

えひめ国体
女子 少年A3000m決勝ラスト一周

優勝🥇兵庫・田中選手8:54.27 pic.twitter.com/Z4l0wMDr6n — 城戸康志 (@dokidokikouji) October 9, 2017
The daughter of Japan's best female amateur marathoner, 2:29:30 runner Chihiro Tanaka, Tanaka broke nine minutes for the first time in August with a runner-up finish to Kenyan Helen Ekarare (Sendai Ikuei H.S.) at the National High School Championships in 8:59.83. Last month she took that to 8:58.81 at a time trial meet in Shizuoka. At the National Sports Festival she ran at the front of a lead pack of eight featuring five Japanese runners and three Kenyans, the pace close to…

by Brett Larner
click here for part one

After a meet record in the men's 10000 m race walk earlier in weekend, the second half of the 71st National Sports Festival saw two more race walk meet records.  In the senior women's 5000 mRW, Kumiko Okada (Bic Camera) broke the record set 21 years ago with a new mark of 21:24.94 to win by almost a minute.  The junior men's 5000 mRW was closer, with Masatora Kawano (Gotemba Minami H.S.) pushing Ryutaro Yamamoto (Toyama Shogyo H.S.) to break his own record.  Yamamoto bettered his 2015 record by 12 seconds in 19:56.66, Kawano also coming in under Kawano's old mark in 20:02.38.

In the junior men's 3000 m, 9th-grader Hiroto Hayashida (Sakuragahara J.H.S.) bettered his high school competition to win in a new junior high school national record of 8:19.14.  No records were set in the junior women's 3000 m, but Kenyan Helen Ekarare (Sendai Ikuei H.S.) delivered one of the fastest performances in National Sports Festival history a…

by Brett Larner
click here for part two

Japan's 71st National Sports Festival cleared the midpoint of its five days of athletics competition Sunday.  Meet records have fallen in five events so far, the highlight being the men's 10000 m race walk where Rio Olympians Eiki Takahashi (Team Fujitsu) and Daisuke Matsunaga (Toyo Univ.) dueled to push each other under the meet record, national record holder Takahashi setting a solid new mark of 38:21.88 but national junior record holder Matsunaga also more than 25 seconds under the old record set two years ago by 20 km world record holder Yusuke Suzuki (Team Fujitsu).

Another Rio Olympian, women's 100 m national record holder Chisato Fukushima (Hokkaido Hi-Tech AC) duly took the 100 m final in 11.66 (+0.5 m/s).  Two members of the Rio silver medal-winning Japanese 4x100 m men's relay team, national champion Asuka Cambridge (Dome) and Ryota Yamagata (Seiko), were scheduled to run the 100 m, but while Yamagata won his opening he…

by Brett Larner
videos by Ekiden News



Just over a week after breaking into both the all-time Japanese junior and high school girls’ 3000 m top ten with a 9:01.23 best at Saitama’s Heisei Kokusai University Time Trials, 2015 National High School Championships 3000 m runner-up Miho Shimada (Yamanashi Gakuin Prep H.S.) was back with another big run to cap the 2015 National Sports Festival at Wakayama’s Kimiidera Park Field on Oct. 6.

After a slow 3:10 opening 1000 m Shimada effortlessly pulled away, dueling with Kenyan Monica Margaret (Aomori Yamada H.S.) as she pushed the pace well under 3:00/km.  Shimada's relentless attack was enough for the win in 9:01.87 just off her fresh new best, Margaret dropping nearly 3 seconds behind for 2nd in 9:04.55. National High School Championships 4th-placer Shinobu Koyoshigawa (Sera H.S.) moved up one spot to take 3rd in 9:14.34, while National High School champion Nana Kuraoka (Kagoshima Joshi H.S.) could manage only 10th in 9:24.72.



The junior b…

by Brett Larner
video by Ekiden News



Two-time World Junior Championships 3000 mSC gold medalist Jonathan Ndiku (Kenya/Team Hitachi Butsuryu) led the weekend's track results, running just off his six-year-old 5000 m PB to win Tokyo's Setagaya Time Trials 5000 m A-heat by a wide margin in 13:13.16.  Ndiku outran all competition by more than 13 seconds, leading 22 men under 14 minutes including 7 other Japan-based Africans.  22-year-old Shota Shinjo (Team Honda) was the top Japanese man at 9th in 13:45.45, like Ndiku just missing his PB.

Southwest of Tokyo at the 70th anniversary National Sports Festival in Wakayama, this year's 10000 m national champion Kasumi Nishihara (Team Yamada Denki) won a close race over 5000 m national champion Misaki Onishi (Team Sekisui Kagaku) and top collegiate Rina Nabeshima (Kanoya Taiiku Univ.), outkicking them by 0.7 seconds to take the national title in 15:33.51.  Onishi held off Nabeshima in a photo finish for 2nd, 15:34.21 to 15:34.23.

In t…

http://www.sponichi.co.jp/sports/news/2015/07/21/kiji/K20150721010773500.html

an editorial by Kenji Fujiyama
translated by Brett Larner

With a crack of the whip from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the controversial plans for the 2020 Olympic Stadium that have generated a storm of criticism have gone back to the drawing board.  Underlying Abe's decision, the news that the project's wasteful $2 billion+ USD price tag has disappeared is glad tidings indeed.  But the price was not the only problem with the plans.

Official JAAF-certified athletics facilities are classified into four categories, with the World Championships and other major international events requiring the highest level facilities within that categorization.  Absolutely essential for a facility to receive the highest level of certification is the presence of an auxiliary track, known as a sub-track.  With no sub-track included in the plans for the 2020 Olympic Stadium, after the Olympics the JAAF would be unable to use …

http://www.asahi.com/articles/ASG5Q4FX5G5QUTQP01J.html

translated by Brett Larner

Set to be rebuilt for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the National Stadium's seats and other equipment are to find new life in sports facilities all across the country.  In response to requests from more than ten municipalities nationwide, the Japan Sports Promotion Center (JSC), managers and operators of the National Stadium, will donate the facility's equipment free of charge.  The list of recipients was announced on May 28.

The equipment to be distributed includes the National Stadium's signature orange plastic chairs, crowd control fencing, and lounge furniture.  The JSC is also looking at putting the soccer pitch's turf and the stadium's extra seats up for sale.  As the site of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the place where the drama of countless famous soccer and rugby matches unfolded, a JSC official commented, "We want to make sure the National Stadium's history …

by Brett Larner

Despite a year that has seen her coach and most of her teammates depart Sendai Ikuei H.S., Kenyan Mary Waithera brought the highlight of the meet to the final day of the National Sports Festival in Gifu.  The favorite in the junior women's 3000 m, Waithera obliterated rival Rosemary Wanjiru (Kenya/Aomori Yamada H.S.) and all Japanese competitors with a meet record 8:48.16, a four-second PB and one of the upper-echelon times of the year worldwide.  Wanjiru was nearly twenty seconds back in 9:06.99, with Shiori Yano (Kitakyushu Municipal H.S.) the top Japanese finisher at 3rd overall in 9:12.91, outkicking a tight pack of four other Japanese athletes.  As she steadily improves Waithera looks set to become another in the lineage of Kenyan greats to have passed through Sendai Ikuei, most notably including the late Beijing Olympics marathon gold medalist Samuel Wanjiru.

2012 National Sports Festival Day Four
Nagaragawa Field, Gifu Memorial Center, Gifu, 10/9/12
click here …