japan running news

The Hokuren Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives has announced that it's women's running team will be disbanded in March, 2023 at the end of the 2022-23 season. Founded in 1987, the Hokuren team qualified for the National Corporate Women's Ekiden 26 times and produced notable athletes including Yukiko Akaba , a 2008 Olympian in the 5000 m and 10000 m. It failed to make last year's National Corporate Women's Ekiden, finishing 29th at the qualifying race. In addition to competing in races, the team regularly held educational session and running events for school children and the general public to help contribute to society by spreading the love of the sport. Its activities will remain unchanged during the 2022-23 season and will still compete as usual. It will also continue to support the Hokuren Distance Challenge series of track meets held across Hokkaido every summer. source article: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/32a9115eac6fa7fc2d7ac2b2a8442e4a76c21e8d tra...

http://www.jaaf.or.jp/files/article/document/10127-0.pdf translated by Brett Larner April 18, 2017 Japan Association of Athletics Federations 1. Selection Policy With the aim of winning medals at the Olympic Games, we will select a Japanese national team comprised of athletes who have demonstrated the capability to perform at the maximum of their abilities in key race situations and who possess the speed necessary to compete at the world level. 2. Selection Competitions      ( 1 ) Marathon Grand Champion Race (referred to hereafter as MGC Race), scheduled to be held Sept. 2019 or later      ( 2 ) MGC Series           1 ) Men                ・71st and 72nd Fukuoka International Marathon                ・Tokyo Marathon 2018 and 2019                ・73rd and 74th Biwako Mainichi Marathon   ...

2015 was a threshold year in Japan, one of record highs and lows.  JRN asked a number of its prominent regular readers to give their picks for the year. Andrew Arminger – president, Boulder Track Club The performance of the year had to have been the 10000 m NR by Kota Murayama with Tetsuya Yoroizaka also under the old NR . That record sat for far too long. NR!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/18VGxJbsvL — Japan Running News (@JRNHeadlines) November 28, 2015 The performer of the year is Yuki Kawauchi , based on his typical body of work and most notably his 6th at NYC . Not only in the money in a World Marathon Major but genuinely competitive on foreign soil which is especially commendable. These both stand out for both genders, it just happens that the men really came through this year. Especially good to see going into 2016. Jimmy Ashworth – 1985 Berlin Marathon winner and first man to break 2:12 in Berlin It sounds a bit daft to narrow it down to a few athletes that ha...

http://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1031964/ukraine-bans-three-time-osaka-international-ladies-marathon-champion-for-four-years Tetiana (Gamera) Shmyrko was yet another athlete managed by Andrey Baranov to have received a doping ban following a win at a Japanese marathon, joining last year's Nagoya Women's Marathon winner Mariya Konovalova and 2011 Tokyo Marathon winner Tatyana Aryasova among others.  Shmyrko's Osaka wins cost Japan's Kayoko Fukushi (Team Wacoal) and Yukiko Akaba (Team Hokuren) home-soil wins, in Akaba's case in her final race before retiring, as well as taking victory from Jelena Prokopcuka (Latvia) this year.

by Brett Larner What if you could have a second chance?  Drifting toward 40, long out of the game, the chance to make all the things you thought you would do when you were younger happen.  What if you had the chance to answer the question, "What if?" In the mid-90s Yoshiko Sakamoto , then Yoshiko Akiba, was one of the top high school runners in Japan, beating future marathon national record holders Yoko Shibui and Mizuki Noguchi on the most competitive stage at the National High School Ekiden Championships and setting a still-standing Fukushima prefecture record for 5 km on the roads.  After graduating in 1997 she and Shibui joined the Mitsui Kaijo corporate team alongside two-time World Championships marathon medalist Reiko Tosa , forming the core of a lineup that would make Mitsui Kaijo into one of the most dominant teams of the day. At Mitsui Kaijo she had a smattering of success, again beating Noguchi on the track at the 1997 National Corporate Championships...

by Brett Larner Marathons are often surprisingly unpredictable, but while there were a couple of big surprises at the 33rd edition of the Osaka International Women's Marathon , what was most surprising was how predictable three of the big results were. One surprise was how aggressively Poland's Karolina Jarzynska  took the race out.  With a best of just 2:26:45, Jarzynska pushed the first half through in 1:11:30 and by 30 km had a lead of 12 seconds as she clocked a 1:42:22 split.  Not too surprisingly, she tied up in the final 12 km and dropped to 3rd but was rewarded for taking her shot with a new PB of 2:26:31, just short of a new national record. Two of the predictable elements came from the two women who ran her down.  For the third time, Ukrainian national record holder and defending champion Tetiana Gamera-Shmyrko  rocked the Osaka course with the fastest second half and final 2.195 km in the field to take her second Osaka win, coming from 42 second...

by Brett Larner Sunday's Osaka International Women's Marathon features an interesting showdown between the race's last three winners, defending champion Tetiana Gamera-Shmyrko (Ukraine), all-time Japanese #9 Risa Shigetomo  (Team Tenmaya), and, in her final race before retiring from the jitsugyodan corporate system, Yukiko Akaba  (Team Hokuren). Gamera-Shmyrko won last year's Osaka over future World Championships bronze medalist Kayoko Fukushi  (Team Wacoal) in a PB 2:23:58 with the kind of miraculously fast second half she and other Eastern European women have produced in recent years, especially at Japanese marathons.  Since then she was a DNF at November's New York City Marathon, where Shigetomo was 11th in 2:31:54.  Shigetomo has never run well in a marathon since her 2:23:23 win at Osaka in 2012, but she has been on top of her game this ekiden season most recently with a 31:50 win on the Jan. 12 National Women's Ekiden's 10 km anchor stage.  ...

by Brett Larner National championship ekiden season winds down over the next two weekends with the National Women's Ekiden this Sunday in Kyoto, followed a week later in Hiroshima by the National Men's Ekiden.  Both races feature teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures made up of top talent all the way from junior high school runners to Olympians competing to determine the true geographic center of Japanese distance running. Sunday's 32nd running of the National Women's Ekiden features Moscow World Championships marathon bronze medalist Kayoko Fukushi  (Aomori) and 4th-placer Ryoko Kizaki (Kyoto), 2013 5000 m national champion Misaki Onishi  (Mie), 2013 London Marathon 3rd placer Yukiko Akaba  (Tochigi), 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi  (Hyogo), Mutsumi Ikeda  (Shiga) and Nanako Kanno  (Kyoto) of 2013 National University Women's Ekiden champion Ritsumeikan University, Azusa Sumi (Aichi), Hanami Sekine  (Aichi) and three ot...

by Brett Larner click here for Japanese men's 2013 rankings Where 2012 was largely negative, 2013 was a mixed year for Japanese women.  On the one hand a Japanese woman won a World Championships marathon medal , another placed 3rd in the even more competitive London Marathon , there was a new all-time Japanese #3 mark for 10000 m , and the state of Japanese women's half marathoning seemed to turn around from its recent slide with a sub-1:09 for the first time since 2009 and five women sub-1:10 , the most since 2008.  On the other hand there were only three marathoners at the Moscow World Championships  thanks to new tough love policies from the Federation with just two finishing , only seven women broke 2:27 , none went under 15:20 for 5000 m , and the nominally elite Yokohama International Women's Marathon registered barely a blip of significance on the international radar. Marathon national record holder and Athens Olympics gold medalist Mizuk...

by Brett Larner click here for video highlights courtesy of Sanyo Newspapers The world's last elite half marathon of the year took place Dec. 23 in Okayama, with a large group of elite Japanese and foreign women squaring off at the Sanyo Women's Road Race half marathon and 10 km. #1-ranked Japan-based Kenyan Sally Chepyego  (Team Kyudenko) was the class of the field in the half-marathon division, blasting a solo 1:08:24 course record to take the 2013 title.  Facing impending retirement, 2013 London Marathon 3rd-placer Yukiko Akaba (Team Hokuren) ran a race characteristically unmotivated to compete for the win, sitting far back in the pack until late in the race and then turning on her usual surge to move up through the field, ultimately taking 2nd a minute behind the highly motived Chepyego in 1:09:24.   Felista Wanjugu  (Kenya/Team Universal Entertainment) and Mai Ito  (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) ran up in the chase formation with Akaba early in the race before ...

by Brett Larner A quick weekend preview as JRN is in international transit for the holidays. The Nittai University Time Trials track series wraps up Saturday with its annual women-only edition featuring fast 3000 m, 5000 m and 10000 m heats. Sunday sees the National High School Ekiden Championships go down, with both the boys' and girls' races broadcast live nationwide and commercial-free on NHK.  The level of competition is extremely high; based on track credentials the 2012 NCAA XC champions University of Oregon women's team would have struggled to make the top ten in last year's girls' race , while the boys' race features at least five high schoolers with 5000 m bests under 14:00.  The National High School Championships offer the first chance to see future greats, like Samuel Wanjiru  in the past, in action. The Dec. 23 national holiday on Monday is the date of the first running of the newly relaunched  National University Women's Invitational Ek...