Skip to main content

Kato, Herrick and Okamoto Lead Ome 30 km Elite Field



One of the Tokyo area's most popular races, the Ome 30 km and 10 km Road Race has long had a relationship with the U.S.A.'s Boston Marathon with top-placing runners from each event being invited to the other. For the first time in recent memory Ome will bring an American woman instead of a man. Off a 2:34:53 in Boston last year Danna Herrick will face 2015 Rotterdam Marathon winner and two-time Ome champ Asami Kato (Panasonic) and, fresh from a win at Sunday's Osaka Half Marathon, Maki Ashi (Kyudenko) in her 30 km debut.

On the men's side 2:12 marathoner Naoki Okamoto (Chugoku Denryoku) and the Koichi Morishita-coached Kento Otsu (Toyota Kyushu) top the bill. Track specialist Naohiro Domoto (JR Higashi Nihon) and university men Daisuke Horiai (Komazawa University) and Kota Oki (Waseda University) round out the invited athlete list with their 30 km debuts, with deeper competition to be expected at the front end of the general division.

The top Japanese female and male finishers will join John Hancock Elite Athlete Team members Yuki Kawauchi (Saitama Pref. Gov't) and Kentaro Nakamoto (Yasukawa Denki), 2018 Katsuta Marathon winners Hiroko Yoshitomi (Memolead) and Kansuke Morihashi (Raffine), and others in the biggest and strongest Japanese contingent in Boston in decades.

52nd Ome 30 km Road Race

Ome, Tokyo, 2/18/18
click here for complete field listing
times listed are best within last three years except where noted

Women
Asami Kato (Panasonic) - 2:26:30 (Rotterdam 2015)
Danna Herrick (U.S.A.) - 2:34:53a (Boston 2017)
Maki Ashi (Kyudenko) - 1:11:12 (Nat'l Corp Half 2017)

Men
Naoki Okamoto (Chugoku Denryoku) - 2:12:56 (Beppu-Oita 2015)
Kento Otsu (Toyota Kyushu) - 1:31:16 (Kumanichi 30 km 2016)
Daisuke Horiai (Komazawa Univ.) - 1:03:53 (Ageo City Half 2017)
Naohiro Domoto (JR Higashi Nihon) - 1:04:22 (Nat'l Univ Half 2010)
Kota Oki (Waseda Univ.) - 1:06:00 (Nat'l Univ Half 2017)

© 2018 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
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