japan running news

by Brett Larner In its third appearance at France's DecaNation Japan turned in its best team performance to date, placing 4th out of 6 teams.   Tomoka Kimura (Team Univ. Ent.) led the way in the women's 2000 m, taking over 6 seconds off the rarely-challenged national record with a 5:47.17 for 2nd, the best placing among any of the ten women on the team.  Her counterpart on the men's squad Masaki Toda (Team Nissin Shokuhin) went one better to win the men's 2000 m in 5:14.39.  Rio Olympian and 2016 national champion Julian Walsh (Toyo Univ.) likewise won the men's 400 m, running 46.09.  Five other men including Walsh's Toyo and Rio teammate Yoshihide Kiryu took 2nd in their events, coming ten points short overall of overtaking Ukraine to make the team podium. DecaNation 2016 Paris, France, 9/13/16 click here for detailed results Women 100 m - Ami Saito (Kurashiki Chuo H.S.) - 11.89 (-0.4 m/s) - 3rd 400 m - Seika Aoyama (Osaka Seikei Univ.) - 54.2...

by Brett Larner videos by aoshin0507 Two-time Olympic medalist, three-time World Championships medalist and national record holder Koji Murofushi  (Mizuno), 39, added an historic twentieth-straight men's hammer throw national title to his list of accomplishments, easily winning the 2014 Japanese National Track and Field Championships in Fukushima with a throw of 73.93 m.  Murofushi could have stopped after his opening throw and still won, runner-up  Hiroki Ako (Tottori T&F Assoc.) throwing 67.60 m, but with the Federation's A- and B-standards for this fall's Asian Games beckoning he continued on, building slightly on his distance over his next few throws before peaking at 73.93. Twenty-straight national titles, taking Murofushi all the way back to 1995, a time when this was the biggest hit in the land.  A true one-of-a-kind. Murofushi wasn't the only national record holder to come out on top on the second day of the National Championships.  Battlin...

by Brett Larner videos by naoki620  and 陸上競技動画集 With the rest of the world busy discovering the joy of the relay that makes the Hakone Ekiden , the Kanto Region university men's road relay championships, the most-watched annual running race in the world, Japan spent the weekend focused on Hakone's stars at the 93rd edition of it's most exciting track meet, the Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships .  Imagine an NCAA national championship held in a major stadium packed with ear-splitting cheering squads from each university and thousands of enthusiastic fans, average folk who actually care about "the sport," and you begin to approach the vibe at the Kanto Regionals.  Plus a half marathon. Yes, the half marathon, the most entertaining event of the meet, D2 running with a 3-minute head start over D1 over nine loops of a course like this: Child's play, or only in Japan? Either way, despite humid conditions both the D2 and D1 turned i...

by Brett Larner After coming out on top of the 100 m qualifying heats and anchoring their 4x100 m teams to qualify for the finals yesterday, Japan's teen sprint sensations Yoshihide Kiryu  (Toyo Univ.) and  Anna Doi  (Daito Bunka Univ.) returned for record-setting finals on the second day of the 2014 Kanto Regional University Track and Field Championships , May 17 in Kumagaya, Saitama. Kiryu, ranked #1 in the D1 100 m after a 10.36 (-0.6) opening round on Friday, started Saturday with a 10.25 (+3.6) to lead the semifinals.  Three hours later he was back in more moderate wind for the final, where he dropped a 10.05 (+1.6) meet record to tie Beijing Olympics bronze medalist Shingo Tsuetsugu 's national university record.  His time, sixth in the world so far this season, was the closest Kiryu has come to his name-making 10.01 just over a year ago, bringing him one step closer to his career goal of Japan's first sub-10 clocking. Just over three hours later h...