japan running news

http://www.sponichi.co.jp/sports/news/2014/12/01/kiji/K20141201009384320.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner

On Dec. 1 Waseda University announced that ekiden head coach Yasuyuki Watanabe, 41, will retire at the end of his contract in March next year.  His successor has not yet been determined.



One of Waseda's most famous alumni, Watanabe had spectacular success during his running career there, winning Hakone Ekiden stages three times including a classic Second Stage battle against Kenyan Stephen Mayaka (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.).  In April, 2003 he was named assistant coach of Waseda's ekiden program and a year later in April, 2004 was promoted to head coach.  In that capacity he set about restoring the fallen Waseda to its former glory.  Under his leadership Waseda finished 2nd at the 2008 Hakone Ekiden, and in the 2010-2011 season it scored a rare triple crown, winning the Izumo Ekiden, National University Ekiden and Hakone Ekiden and becoming the first school to set co…

http://www.hochi.co.jp/sports/etc/20140417-OHT1T50093.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner
video by naoki620

A new wind is blowing on the road to Hakone as the newly-minted Obirin University ekiden team becomes fully operational this year.  In April last year Stephen Mayaka, 41, who wowed the nation at the Hakone Ekiden as a student at Yamanashi Gakuin University, became head coach at Obirin.  Devoting his first year to recruiting, this spring Mayaka welcomed sixteen athletes including Kenyan Lazarus Motanya Asimundi to the new program.  The fresh-faced team made up entirely of first-years is dead-set on making the main event at Hakone before they graduate four years from now.

The sound of feet striking Obirin's cherry tree-lined track in Sagamihara is the music of hope and anticipation.  The "single-batch" team of sixteen is finally underway on the road that Coach Mayaka has plotted out for them.  Without distance runners on the school's track team when he joine…

http://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athletics/Tanui+misses+flight+to+Oregon+/-/1100/1415334/-/4e90u8z/-/index.html

by Brett Larner

I don't expect that many people will take the considerable time necessary to read the full texts of all four interviews in this series.  I plan to edit the most important quotes from Samuel Wanjiru’s Japanese mentors and colleagues together into a cohesive account of his career from the Japanese point of view, but in the meantime, looking at the commonalities between the interviews and other previously-published details this story emerges, incomplete as it is: Wanjiru was discovered by the Japanese scout Shunichi Kobayashi and sent to Sendai Ikuei H.S. in 2002.At Sendai Ikuei, he was educated and developed by Takao Watanabe, who focused not only on development as an athlete but also on psychological and personal development.  Watanabe receives unanimous credit in Japan as the primary influence on Wanjiru's mental and spiritual growth.  Watanabe introduced Wanjiru to Kenyan Stephen Mayaka, a longtime resident of Japan who came to assist Wanjiru in his life and car…

The fourth in JRN's series of in-depth, original interviews with the Japanese friends and colleagues of Samuel Wanjiru, this interview with Yasuto Kimura, a popular Tokyo-based coach of amateur runners and a former Hakone Ekiden ace with Chuo University who became close friends with Wanjiru following his departure from the Toyota Kyushu corporate team in 2008, is the most personal of them all. Click here for an introduction to this series of interviews and for links to the previous interviews with Masato Imai, Stephen Mayaka, Yu Mitsuya and Koichi Morishita. Come back tomorrow for the conclusion to the series.

Yasuto Kimura interviewed by Brett Larner in Kanda, Tokyo, 7/20/11
© 2011 Brett Larner all rights reserved
No part of this interview may be reproduced or quoted without express written permission.

photos © 2010 Yasuto Kimura
all rights reserved
To start off, could you talk about the nature of your relationship with Samuel Wanjiru? People are saying that I might have been the one w…

The first of JRN's four-part series interviews in the weeks following Samuel Wanjiru's death with the people in Japan who knew him best and made him what he was. For an explanation of the origin of these interviews please click here. In this interview, Stephen Mayaka, the first Kenyan to run in Japan all the way from high school through university and on to a pro career and a mentor to Wanjiru and other Japan-resident Kenyans, talks about his experiences with Wanjiru. Tomorrow's interview will be Wanjiru's coach at the Toyota Kyushu corporate team, Barcelona Olympics marathon silver medalist Koichi Morishita.

Stephen Mayaka interviewed by Brett Larner in Takasaki, Gunma, 6/23/11
© 2011 Brett Larner All rights reserved No part of this interview may be reproduced or quoted without express written permission.
photo © 2011 Daniel Seite
All rights reserved
To start with, could you talk about the early stages?  Wanjiru’s discovery, his life in Kenya before he came to Japan, how …