The performance of the 2nd day of Japan's 110th National Track and Field Championships came c/o the latest monster to come out of Kyoto's Rakunan H.S. , 400 m hurdler Taiju Goto . In the opening round heats Goto, who turned 17 last month, closed hard to win his heat in 48.31, a PB by nearly a second and the fastest-ever U18 time anywhere in the world. And at only 0.42 off the senior NR held by the great Dai Tamesue , there's a lot of optimism for more in the final and the rest of the season. Another great performance came in the men's 200 m heats, where Soshi Mizukubo moved up to all-time #2 on the Japanese lists with a 20.07 (+0.5) PB to win Heat 3, 0.04 off another antique NR held by another legend, Shingo Suetsugu . By comparison the 100 m seemed pretty tame, with veteran Shuhei Tada scoring his first national title in 5 years in only 10.17 (+0.1) in what seems like an off-year for the event in Japan. After leading the women's 200 m heats in 23.01 (+0.1) Abiga...
Japan's 110th National Track and Field Championships kicked off Friday at the same stadium that will host September's Asian Games. From an international point of view the biggest result was the return of Paris Olympics women's javelin throw gold medalist Haruka Kitaguchi . After a rough year Kitaguchi threw 62.86 m on her fifth attempt, her best throw since last June's Ostrava Golden Spike meet and enough to give her the win by over a meter. It was still almost 4.5 m short of Kitaguchi's NR, but it was a big step back in the right direction. On the track there were a lot of surprising results on the first day, with multiple meet records, near-misses on MR, and fastest-ever qualifying rounds. The race of the day was the women's 5000 m final, where 4-time national champ and NR holder Nozomi Tanaka tried to make it 5 in a row. With the race going at 15:15-20 pace Tanaka broke away with 4 laps to go, opening a substantial lead over Aichi local Yuma Yamamoto and t...