Skip to main content

Fukuoka in Range of Miyazaki With One Day to Go at Grand Tour Kyushu 2011

by Brett Larner

Starting the second half of the eight-day Grand Tour Kyushu 2011 with a 5:45 lead over rival Fukuoka Prefecture, defending champion Miyazaki Prefecture retains a lead of 4:31 with one day of racing to go. Fukuoka came out swinging on the first leg of Stage Five, with Ryohei Nakano setting the only new stage record of the Tour so far.  Nakano covered the 17.4 km leg in 52:28, the next runner more than two minutes back and Miyazaki's Tomoaki Bungo 3:05 behind in 5th.  Miyazaki worked its way back toward the front but Fukuoka held on to the lead thanks in part to leg bests from legs three and four runners Makoto Tobimatsu and Shuji Yoshikawa, winning Stage Five in 3:46:15 to pick up 1:58 on Miyazaki's overall lead.

Miyazaki came back hard on Stage Six, winning five of the six individual legs and adding 8:54 to its lead over Fukuoka.  Miyazaki rookie Kazuya Deguchi picked up his third stage win of the Tour, putting him in contention for MVP, while Daegu World Championships marathon 7th-placer Hiroyuki Horibata was particularly impressive, winning the 20.2 km anchor stage in 1:00:50 by a  margin of nearly three minutes.

Down almost 13 minutes at the start of the Tour's longest stage, the eight-leg, 127.3 km Seventh Stage, Fukuoka fought back bit by bit, winning five of the legs and cutting down Miyazaki's lead piece by piece.  Miyazaki's fortunes were hurt when leg three runner Koichi Kamo finished only 8th on time and lost almost four minutes to Fukuoka's Kota Ogata, and by the end of the day Fukuoka had won the stage and picked up 8:10, putting it within five minutes of the leaders in the overall standings.  One more day like that and Fukuoka will be looking at dethroning Miyazaki as the dominant center of running in Kyushu.

Grand Tour Kyushu 2011
Nagasaki-Fukuoka, 10/30-11/6/11
click here for complete results

Stage Five - five legs, 71.3 km - Fukuoka Pref. - 3:46:15
Leg One (17.4 km) - Ryohei Nakano (Fukuoka Pref.) - 52:28 - CR
Leg Two (17.6 km) - Satoru Sasaki (Miyazaki Pref.) - 53:55
Leg Three (12.0 km) - Makoto Tobimatsu (Fukuoka Pref.) - 41:35
Leg Four (11.2 km) - Shuji Yoshikawa (Fukuoka Pref.) - 34:27
Leg Five (13.1 km) - Masaya Shimizu (Miyazaki Pref.) - 39:46

Stage Six - six legs, 86.7 km - Miyazaki Pref. - 4:22:38
Leg One (13.7 km) - Kazuya Deguchi (Miyazaki Pref.) - 41:08
Leg Two (14.7 km) - Takuya Fukatsu (Miyazaki Pref.) - 44:26
Leg Three (16.5 km) - Yuki Iwai (Miyazaki Pref.) - 51:08
Leg Four (11.1 km) - Yuki Mori (Nagasaki Pref.) - 33:32
Leg Five (10.5 km) - Kenichi Shiraishi (Miyazaki Pref.) - 31:24
Leg Six (20.2 km) - Hiroyuki Horibata (Miyazaki Pref.) - 1:00:50

Stage Seven - eight legs, 127.3 km - Fukuoka Pref. - 6:30:03
Leg One (17.6 km) - Takahiro Mori (Miyazaki Pref.) - 53:22
Leg Two (12.7 km) - Mamoru Hirano (Fukuoka Pref.) - 38:58
Leg Three (13.0 km) - Kota Ogata (Fukuoka Pref.) - 40:23
Leg Four (18.0 km) - Kenji Takeuchi (Fukuoka Pref.) - 53:36
Leg Five (15.5 km) - Seiji Kobayashi (Nagasaki Pref.) - 47:03
Leg Six (14.9 km) -  Noriaki Fukushima (Fukuoka Pref.) - 45:57
Leg Seven (17.7 km) - Kenichiro Setoguchi (Miyazaki Pref.) - 53:45
Leg Eight (17.9 km) - Masayuki Obata (Fukuoka Pref.) - 54:06

(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