Skip to main content

Ndiku Over Murayama, Shoji Outkicks Lacaze at Fukuoka XC

by Brett Larner
photos by rikujoulove

Japan's two-race cross-country season wrapped up Saturday with the 29th Fukuoka International Cross-Country Meet, the last chance for Japanese athletes to make this year's World Cross-Country Championships team.  Two-time world junior 3000 mSC champion Jonathan Ndiku (Kenya/Team Hitachi Butsuryu) easily beat #1-ranked collegiate Kenta Murayama (Komazawa University) in the senior men's 10 km, surging on a corner mid-race to break free and win by a margin of 9 seconds in 29:22.  Murayama, in his last race wearing the Komazawa uniform, dueled with New Year Ekiden Fourth Stage course record setter Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) before kicking away for 2nd in 29:31, Shitara 4 seconds behind.

Corporate runner Yuta Takahashi (DeNA RC) outkicked 2014 Ageo City Half Marathon winner Koki Takada (Waseda Univ) for 4th in 29:36, with 2013 Ageo winner Takashi Ichida (Daito Bunka Univ.) closing fast but coming up short of catching his high school teammate Takada, 2 seconds back in 29:42 for 6th.  Murayama, Shitara and Ichida have all run the United Airlines NYC Half in conjunction with Ageo and support from JRN, with Takada set to join them and Ichida returning to NYC in 3 weeks.  Further back, Yu Mitsuya (Team Toyota Kyushu), one of Japan's all-time greats on the track but unable to translate it to success on the roads, finished 30th in his final race before retiring.

Both the senior women's 6 km and the junior women's 6 km came down to head-to-head races.  In the senior race Australia's Genevieve Lacaze pushed the tempo against Mai Shoji (Chukyo Univ.) and Miho Shimizu (Team Hokuren), shaking free of Shimizu but unable to get rid of Shoji.  Side-by-side until the final straight, Shoji proved to have the stronger kick as she took the win in 19:54 by 2 seconds over Lacaze.  Shimizu hung on for 3rd in 20:02, well clear of a chase pack led by Chiba XC runner-up Maki Izumida (Rikkyo Univ.) who took 4th in 20:11.

The junior race put the seniors to shame as Azusa Sumi (Toyokawa H.S.) hammered Miho Shimada (Yamanashi Gakuin Prep H.S.) on the string of hills midway through the final lap to pull free to the win in 19:50, beating Shimizu's winning time in the senior race by 4 seconds.  Shimada likewise bettered Lacaze's time, running 19:54 for 2nd.  Nana Kuraoka (Kagoshima Joshi H.S.) outran a chase pack including Chiba XC junior top 2 Wakana Kabasawa (Tokiwa H.S.) and Yuri Nozoe (Kamimura Gakuen H.S.) for 3rd in 20:04.

The junior men's 8 km may have been the race of the day, with constant turnover at the front as many of the country's best high schoolers surged repeatedly to try to take control.  Almost all the favorites except 2014 World Juniors team member Shota Onizuka (Omuta H.S.) were soon out of the lead pack, which shook down to five.  Junnosuke Matsuo (Akita Kogyo H.S.) managed to get control of the situation, but with a hard attack from Hiroyuki Sakaguchi (Isahaya H.S.) it went down to the tape, both clocking 24:12 but Sakaguchi getting the win.  Onizuka took 3rd, he and the rest of the front group timed at 24:14.

Haruki Nishiumura (Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S.), another top-level high schooler, opted for the junior men's 4 km where he outran two members of 2014 National High School Ekiden champion Sera H.S. for the win in 12:29.  Ami Yoshiki (Nakamura Joshi H.S.) won the relatively low-key junior women's 4 km in 13:55.

29th Fukuoka International Cross-Country Meet
Fukuoka, 2/21/15
click here for complete results

Senior Men's 10 km
1. Jonathan Ndiku (Kenya/Team Hitachi Butsuryu) - 29:22
2. Kenta Murayama (Komazawa Univ.) - 29:31
3. Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) - 29:35
4. Yuta Takahashi (DeNA RC) - 29:36
5. Koki Takada (Waseda Univ.) - 29:40
6. Takashi Ichida (Daito Bunka Univ.) - 29:42
7. Kazuma Kubota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 29:45
8. Tatsuya Hayashi (Team Toyota) - 29:50
9. Naohiro Domoto (Team JR Higashi Nihon) - 29:55
10. Kazuhiro Kuga (Team Fujitsu) - 29:59

Senior Women's 6 km
1. Mai Shoji (Chukyo Univ.) - 19:54
2. Genevieve Lacaze (Australia) - 19:56
3. Miho Shimizu (Team Hokuren) - 20:02
4. Maki Izumida (Rikkyo Univ.) - 20:11
5. Erika Ikeda (Team Higo Ginko) - 20:14
6. Tomoka Kimura (Team Univ. Ent.) - 20:14
7. Yui Fukuda (Team Toyota Jidoshokki) - 20:16
8. Rina Koeda (Daito Bunka Univ.) - 20:17
9. Naoko Koizumi (Team Denso) - 20:20
10. Kaori Morita (Team Panasonic) - 20:32

Junior Men's 8 km
1. Hiroyuki Sakaguchi (Isahaya H.S.) - 24:12
2. Junnosuke Matsuo (Akita Kogyo H.S.) - 24:12
3. Shota Onizuka (Omuta H.S.) - 24:14
4. Kohei Nanba (Senshu Prep Matsudo H.S.) - 24:14
5. Haruki Minatoya (Akita Kogyo H.S.) - 24:14
6. Hiroki Miura (Tohoku H.S.) - 24:17
7. Tomoki Ota (Hamamatsu Nittai Prep H.S.) - 24:21
8. Tomoya Morita (Higashi Harima H.S.) - 24:22
9. Reiri Nakashima (Kurashiki H.S.) - 24:25
10. Kenshi Fukuda (Suma Gakuen H.S.) - 24:25

Junior Women's 6 km
1. Azusa Sumi (Toyokawa H.S.) - 19:50
2. Miho Shimada (Yamanashi Gakuin Prep H.S.) - 19:54
3. Nana Kuraoka (Kagoshima Joshi H.S.) - 20:04
4. Yuri Nozoe (Kamimura Gakuen H.S.) - 20:05
5. Yuka Sarumida (Toyokawa H.S.) - 20:08
6. Wakana Kabasawa (Tokiwa H.S.) - 20:08
7. Yuka Mukai (Sera H.S.) - 20:11
8. Yumika Miura (Yamanashi Gakuin Prep H.S.) - 20:17
9. Reina Shinozaki (Tokiwa H.S.) - 20:30
10. Kyoka Nakagawa (Kumamoto Shinai Joshi Gakuin H.S.) - 20:34

Junior Men's 4 km
1. Haruki Nishiumura (Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S.) - 12:29
2. Hiroki Horiuchi (Sera H.S.) - 12:31
3. Naoki Nagareda (Sera H.S.) - 12:36
4. Masahiro Kamidoi (Junshin H.S) - 12:37
5. Chiaki Iwahara (Sendai Ikuei H.S.) - 12:41

 Junior Women's 4 km
1. Ami Yoshiki (Nakamura Joshi H.S.) - 13:55
2. Mei Kawazi (Shonan H.S.) - 13:57
3. Minami Sato (Junten H.S.) - 13:59
4. Amiru Akiyama (Suma Gakuen H.S.) - 14:09
5. Momoko Watanabe (Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S.) - 14:14

text (c) 2015 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
photos (c) 2015 M. Kawaguchi, 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