Skip to main content

2010 World Jr. 200 m Champion Iizuka Runs World-Leading 20.21 for All-Time Japanese #3, 18-Year-Old Hashimoto 2nd in 20.35

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/f-sp-tp0-20130503-1121751.html
http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/f-sp-tp0-20130503-1121759.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner
click here for complete results
videos by naoki620



At the May 3 Shizuoka International Track and Field Meet men's 200 m, 2010 World Junior Championships gold medalist and London Olympian Shota Iizuka (21, Chuo Univ.) won Heat Four in a world-leading meet record time of 20.21 (+1.4 m/s).  A PB by 0.24 seconds, Iizuka's time was enough to put him at all-time #3 on the Japanese lists and would have been good for 7th in the London final.  He easily cleared the Japanese Federation's specified time for Moscow World Championships qualification, 20.29.  "The first time I saw it in print I thought it was really fast," said Iizuka, "but if you can't run that kind of time then you can't be internationally competitive."

Iizuka spent the winter training at warmer locations in the United States and Australia.  If he makes the podium at June's National Track and Field Championships he will be guaranteed a place on the Moscow team.  "Yeah, at Nationals I want to run perfectly and make the team without any questions about it," he said with determination.



In the Shizuoka men's 200 m Heat Three, a shiny brand new first-year university runner wowed the crowd, 18-year-old Akiyuki Hashimoto (Waseda Univ.) winning in 20.35 with a 0.3 m/s headwind, a PB by almost half a second and the third-best mark in the world this year at the time, bumped down to fourth by Iizuka's 20.21 in Heat 4.  Faster than any other runner of the day except Iizuka, Hashimoto also cleared the meet record.  Clearing the 20.52 World Championships A-standard in a virtual Cinderella story, Hashimoto said, "I was trying to make the team for the World University Games, but since things turned out this way I'm going to have to change gears and go for Worlds," the excitement in his voice bursting through his smile.

As a senior at Kagoshima's Sensatsu Seishukan H.S. Hashimoto won last summer's National High School Championships 200 m.  In high school he had many explosive clashes with Yoshihide Kiryu, one year his junior at rival Rakunan H.S. in Kyoto.  Asked about Kiryu tying the 100 m world junior record earlier this week at the Oda Memorial Meet, Hashimoto replied firmly, "That's an incredible time, but it doesn't mean I'm going to lose the next time we line up against each other."

Comments

TokyoRacer said…
We can actually put "Japanese men" and "world sprinting power" in the same sentence? Unbelievable!

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...

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...

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...