Skip to main content

19th Asian Athletics Championships - Distance Preview (updated)

by Brett Larner

Update: Start lists for the first day of competition are available here.  National champion Yuki Sato is not running the 10000 m but is still entered for the 5000 m.

The 2011 Asian Athletics Championships run July 7-10 in Kobe, Hyogo, the last major competition for many of the athletes before next month's World Championships in Daegu, Korea. Much of the domestic Japanese attention will be on one of the very first events of the Asian Championships, the men's 10000 m. Two of the top three from this year's Japanese National Championships men's 10000 m, Akinobu Murasawa (Tokai Univ.) and Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) are on the entry list and hunting for a World Championships qualifying mark, Ugachi to improve his 27:41.97 B-standard mark to the A level and Murasawa to at least get under 28 for the first time. The absence of a Kenyan distance squad from Qatar means that the mostly-Ethiopian team running for Bahrain will be the Japanese men's main competition, both defending champion Mahboob Ali Hasan Mahboob and Bilisuma Shugi Gelasa holding best times faster than the Japanese national record. The presence of such quality foreign competition combined with the home ground advantage means that if the weather cooperates A-standard marks may be on the way, possibly with a few records.

The women's 10000 m is comparatively weaker but features the Indian pair of Preeja Sreedharan and Kavita Raut who impressed on the track at last year's Asian Games. With both women and Ethiopian Bahraini Shitaye Eshete Habtegebrel holding PBs under 32 minutes it would likely take either a very slow, tactical race or a PB-level performance for either Kaoru Nagao (Team Univ. Ent.) or Hitomi Nakamura (Team Panasonic) to factor into the front of the pack.

The women's 5000 m is another story, with a competitive top group led by Japanese National Championships runner-up Hitomi Niiya (Team Univ. Ent.) and India's Raut. Niiya is the only woman in the field to hold a valid World Championships A-standard mark, but with Raut not far behind it could be a head-to-head race for the gold medal. Japanese 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi (Team Toyota Jidoshokki) holds the fastest PB in the field but has been dealing with injuries for the last year and dropped out of the same race where Niiya set her PB of 15:13.12 at the end of June.

The men's 5000 m is heavily tilted in Japan's favor, with the top three from this year's National Championships, Kazuya Watanabe (Team Shikoku Denryoku), Sato, and Tetsuya Yoroizaka (Meiji Univ.) taking up three of the top four places by PB. Ethiopian Alemu Bekele Gebre (Bahrain) comes in just ahead of Yoroizaka in the seedings with a 13:38.10 PB but would need a weak run from Watanabe and Sato to have a shot at winning. Seungho Baek (Korea) is an outside contender for a medal with the fifth-best PB in the field, 13:42.98.

The Asian Athletics Championships begin July 7 with the women's and men's 10000 m. Look for complete results and highlight videos on JRN.

2011 Asian Athletics Championships Entry List Highlights
Men's 10000 m
Mahboob Ali Hasan Mahboob (Bahrain) - 27:24.46
Bilisuma Shugi Gelasa (Bahrain) - 27:32.72
Tsuyoshi Ugachi (Team Konica Minolta) - 27:41.97
Akinobu Murasawa (Tokai Univ.) - 28:00.78
Suresh Kumar (India) - 28:58.00
Kheta Ram (India) - 29:20.35
Serod Batochir (Mongolia) - 29:43.79
Mohammed Khazaei (Iran) - 30:25.00

Men's 5000 m
Kazuya Watanabe (Team Shikoku Denryoku) - 13:23.15
Yuki Sato (Team Nissin Shokuhin) - 13:23.57
Alemu Bekele Gebre (Bahrain) - 13:38.10
Tetsuya Yoroizaka (Meiji Univ.) - 13:39.31
Seungho Baek (Korea) - 13:42.98
Dejenee Regasa Mootumaa (Bahrain) - 13:50.60

Men's 3000 mSC
Tareq Mubarak Salem Taher (Bahrain) - 8:06.13
Abubaker Ali Kamal (Qatar) - 8:15.80
Aoi Matsumoto (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) - 8:30.49
Hiroyoshi Umegae (Team NTN) - 8:34.96
Tsuyoshi Takeda (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) - 8:37.05
Ramachandran Ramdas (India) - 8:42.58

Men's 1500 m
Belal Mansoor Belal Ali (Bahrian) - 3:31.49
Omar Alrasheedi (Kuwait) - 3:39.77
Mohammed Alazemi (Kuwait) - 3:40.14
Chaminda Indika Wijekoon (Sri Lanka) - 3:40.78
Hiroshi Ino (Team Fujitsu) - 3:42.83
Sang Min Sin (Korea) - 3:43.54

Women's 10000 m
Preeja Sreedharan (India) - 31:50.47
Kavita Raut (India) - 31:51
Shitaye Eshete Habtegebrel (Bahrain)- 31:53.27
Kaoru Nagao (Team Univ. Ent.) - 32:10.46
Kareema Jasin Saleh (Bahrain) - 32:17.14
Hitomi Nakamura (Team Panasonic) - 32:51.61

Women's 5000 m
Yuriko Kobayashi (Team Toyota Jidoshokki) - 15:05.37
Hitomi Niiya (Team Univ. Ent.) - 15:13.12
Kavita Raut (India) - 15:16.54
Tejitu Daba Chalchissa (Bahrain) - 15:29.78
Alia Mohammed Saeed (U.A.E.) - 15:30.00

Women's 3000 mSC
Minori Hayakari (Kyoto Koka AC) - 9:33.93
Sudha Singh (India) - 9:55.67
Misato Horie (Team Noritz) - 10:02.24
Thi Phuong Nguyen (Vietnam) - 10:02.28
Kareema Jasin Saleh (Bahrain) - 10:05.60

Women's 1500 m
Tranh Hang Trung (Vietnam) - 4:09.58
Betlhem Desalegn Blayneh) - 4:12.00
Jhuma Khatun (India) - 4:12.30
Jaisha Orchatteri Puthiyaveetil (India) - 4:13.15
Alia Mohammed Saeed (U.A.E.) - 4:14.00
Genzeb Shumi Regasa (Bahrain) - 4:14.05

(c) 2011 Brett Larner
all rights reserved
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more