by Brett Larner A few months ago JRN had dinner with an executive member of an IAAF gold label overseas marathon. "The World Championships marathon doesn't matter," this colleague told us. "Nobody cares about it." That may be true many places, but in Japan, where most athletes receive regular salaries and do not have agents pushing them into overseas big money races, patriotism still counts for more than the shot at a big payday and the country's best marathoners regularly line up for the chance to represent their country at the World Championships. Even more so in years like this which precede an Olympics because if a Japanese athlete scores an individual marathon medal at Worlds their place on the Olympic team is secure. The results speak for themselves. In the last 20 years Japanese women have scored nine individual marathon medals at eight out of ten World Championships and the men at three along with team medals from both sides virtually every ...
the world's window into elite japanese distance running, since 2007