Skip to main content

MGC Race Olympic Marathon Trials Qualifier - Daiji Kawai

Daiji Kawai

age: 27
sponsor: Toenec
graduated from: Seki Shogyo H.S., Reitaku University

best time inside MGC window:
2:10:50, 11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon

PB: 2:10:50, 11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon

other PBs:
5000 m: 13:45.91 (2018) 10000 m: 28:08.52 (2018) half marathon: 1:02:45 (2019)

marathons inside MGC window (Aug. 1 2017 – April 30 2019)
11th, 2019 Lake Biwa Marathon, 2:10:50
60th, 2018 Hokkaido Marathon, 2:28:25
42nd, 2018 Lake Biwa Marathon, 2:23:13

other major results:
5th, 2019 National Championships 10000 m, 28:43.46
3rd, 2019 Oda Memorial Meet 5000 m, 13:51.56
31st, 2019 Marugame Half Marathon, 1:02:45 – PB
8th, 2019 New Year Ekiden Fourth Stage (22.4 km), 1:05:48
3rd, 2018 Kumamoto Kosa 10-Mile Road Race, 46:15
1st, 2016 Inuyama Half Marathon, 1:03:21

Kawai is a rarity in the MGC men’s field, one of the only men who went to university in the Tokyo-centric Kanto Region but didn’t run the Hakone Ekiden. After graduating from Reitaku University he was supported by 2012 London Olympian Arata Fujiwara for a year before joining the minor Toenec team.

He has a lot of parallels with Fujiwara. Both won the Inuyama Half Marathon and had major jumps in their marathon performances after failed debuts. In Fujiwara’s case he went from 2:38 to 2:08. In Kawai’s, he ran 2:23:13 in Lake Biwa last year, bombed out with a 2:28:25 in Hokkaido in August, then broke through with a 2:10:50 back in Lake Biwa this March to make the MGC cut.

In between he was mostly on, running a 10000 m PB in November, a solid 10-mile PB in December, a decent 8th on the New Year Ekiden’s longest stage, and a half marathon PB in February. Since Lake Biwa he’s been 3rd at the Oda Memorial Meet’s 5000 m and 5th in the National Championships 10000 m.

In terms of quality Kawai is still a level or two down from the favorites to make the Olympic team, but history has shown that the people like him with a big breakthrough performance in the midst of a period of steady improvement can be the most dangerous. Kawai was named alternate for the Doha World Championships team, so in the event that someone cancels he will swap to that instead of doing the MGC Race.

Next preview: Keiko Nogami (Juhachi Ginko).

© 2019 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