Skip to main content

Osaka Half Marathon Elite Field Highlights

Held alongside the Osaka International Women's Marathon, its companion Osaka Half Marathon has grown from a mass-participation mixed gender event to now feature as one of Japan's top post-ekiden season half marathons. Not being a national team selection event for the World Half Marathon Championships it doesn't get many of the big names, who mostly line up a week later in Marugame, but the fields are definitely not bad.

On the women's side, last year's winner Reia Iwade (Under Armour), the fastest female Japanese marathoner of 2019, is back as the only woman in the race to have broken 70 minutes. But she has serious competition from Yuka Hori (Panasonic), only 1:11:05 at the 2018 National Corporate Half but fresh off a 31:38.63 PB for 10000 m earlier this month. 10000 m collegiate national record holder Hikari Yoshimoto (Daihatsu) should also be one of the bigger threats to Iwade after a brilliant anchor run at last month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden.

On the men's side the likable Yohei Suzuki (Aisan Kogyo) has the only recent sub-62 time in the field, but three other men, Yuki Oshikawa (NTN), Naoya Takahashi (Yasukawa Denki) and newly-crowned Swedish marathon national record holder David Nilsson all went under 1:02:10 last year and make it a seriously close race up front. Sub-2:10 marathoners Jo Fukuda (Nishitetsu), Kenji Yamamoto (Mazda) and Kohei Matsumura (MHPS) should also be near the front end if not leading.

JRN will be on-site in Osaka on race weekend. Check back closer to race date for more info and live streaming options for following the race internationally.

Osaka Half Marathon

Osaka, 1/26/20
complete elite field listing
times listed are best in last three years except where noted

Women
Reia Iwade (Under Armour) - 1:09:46 (Osaka 2019)
Yuka Hori (Panasonic) - 1:11:05 (National Corporate Half 2018)
Kotomi Tsubokura (Wacoal) - 1:11:08 (Osaka 2019)
Yuko Kikuchi (Edion) - 1:11:32 (Sanyo 2019)
Kaori Yoshida (Team RxL) - 1:11:54 (Ageo 2018)
Hikari Yoshimoto (Daihatsu) - 1:12:39 (Sendai 2019)
Mao Kiyota (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) - 1:12:41 (Gifu Seiryu 2017)
Rui Nishida (Sysmex) - 1:13:34 (Osaka 2018)
Yuki Kanehira (Sysmex) - 1:14:12 (Sanyo 2017)
Natsuki Omori (Daihatsu) - debut - 2:29:15 (Osaka Women's Marathon 2019)

Men
Yohei Suzuki (Aisan Kogyo) - 1:01:53 (Marugame 2018)
Yuki Oshikawa (NTN)  - 1:02:01 (National Corporate Half 2018)
Naoya Takahashi (Yasukawa Denki) - 1:02:01 (National Corporate Half 2018)
David Nilsson (Sweden) - 1:02:09 (Ageo 2018)
Jo Fukuda (Nishitetsu) - 1:02:25 (Marugame 2019)
Kenji Yamamoto (Mazda) - 1:02:34 (National Corporate Half 2019)
Masaki Takamoto (Subaru) - 1:02:36 (National Corporate Half 2019)
Kohei Matsumura (MHPS) - 1:02:37 (National Corporate Half 2019)
Masanori Sumida (Aichi Seiko) - 1:02:37 (National Corporate Half 2019)
Masamichi Yasuda (Aichi Seiko) - 1:02:39 (National Corporate Half 2018)
Tatsuya Maruyama (Yachiyo Kogyo) - 1:02:42 (National University Half 2019)
Shinji Yoshimoto (Kurosaki Harima) - 1:02:45 (National Corporate Half 2019)
Yuto Fujiyama (Osaka Police) - 1:02:54 (Osaka 2019)
Daichi Takeuchi (Toenec) - 1:02:59 (Osaka 2019)

© 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon

On Apr. 9 the Kinki Region Bureau of Health, Labor and Welfare's Drug Control Division arrested Matthew Inglis Fox , 38, an Australian business owner of no known fixed address, on charges of violating the importation regulations of the Narcotics Control Act by smuggling tablets containing marijuana elements from the United States. The suspect had entered Japan in February to run in the Osaka Marathon . The suspect was arrested on suspicion of smuggling approximately 12 pills containing marijuana by sending them from a U.S. airport to Osaka's Kansai Airport using an international courier service on Feb. 19. The Osaka branch of the Customs Service discovered the tablets in arriving cargo and suspected them to be narcotics. Customs contacted the Narcotics Control Division, which then began its investigation of the case. According to the Narcotics Control Division, the suspect denies the charges.  Translator's note: Fox, who received a lifetime ban from the Ageo City Half Mara...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tokyo Olympics Marathon Trials Winner Nakamura Enters Waseda Grad School

An Olympian in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, Shogo Nakamura (Fujitsu) announced on his social media that he has entered Waseda University 's Graduate School of Sport Science with the start of the new academic year this week. A graduate of Mie's Ueno Kogyo H.S. , Nakamura went to Komazawa University before joining Fujitsu in 2015. His senior year of high school he was 3rd overall and 2nd Japanese in the 5000 m at the National High School Track and Field Championships, and in the fall the same year he ran what was at the time the 7th-fastest high school mark ever, 13:50.38. At Komazawa he scored four individual stage wins across the three big university ekidens. In 2019 he won the MGC Race, Japan's marathon trials for the Tokyo Olympics, where he was 62nd in 2:22:23. Nakamura indicated that he would be studying "top sports management" under professor Takeo Hirata . "I'll be balancing competition and academics," Nakamura wrote. "I'm r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...
12 comments
Read more