Skip to main content

Tokyo Marathon to be Held in Fall of 2021 With Field of 38,000

On Oct. 4 it was learned from an involved source that the 2021 Tokyo Marathon, currently scheduled for Mar. 7, has made a final decision to move to the fall next year with a full field size of 38,000 rather than as an elite-only race. The postponement is a result of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, but the organizers do not plan to reduce the event's size. The decision has been approved by the board of directors of the Tokyo Marathon Foundation and a formal announcement is expected to be made on Oct. 9.

The move puts the 2021 Tokyo Marathon in the aftermath of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. According to the source, the original Mar. 7 was viewed as simply not feasible given the current status of the coronavirus crisis. The move will allow the race to be held without a reduction in the number of participants, roughly 38,000 people in normal years. The Foundation was keen to avoid a reduction in the number of participants for a second-straight year after this year's mass participation field was cut shortly before the race. One consequence of the coronavirus crisis has been a reduction in the event's income from sponsors.

This year's Tokyo Marathon in March was held as an elite-only competition, with Suguru Osako (29, Nike) setting a new national record of 2:05:29. The cancelation of the mass-participation race came two weeks beforehand, with entrants given the option of shifting their entries to either 2021 or 2022. Since then, marathons and road races all across the country have canceled, announced one-year postponements, or scaled down their event sizes. As the largest marathon in Japan, an announcement that Tokyo plans to go ahead with a full field may help to slow down this domino effect.

The Foundation originally planned to make a final decision about next year's race by August of this year. That decision was delayed in order to make it possible to make a decision informed by the latest government policies regarding public events. Government policies currently call for events to reduce the maximum number of people present by 50% through the end of November, with the subsequent level still under study. Based upon that timeline and its impact on preparations the Tokyo Marathon organizers decided the planned spring date was not feasible. Foundation spokespeople had previously said that they were examining all options but did not plan to hold another elite-only race.

source article:
https://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/202010040000860.html
translated and edited by Brett Larner

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Hakone Champ AGU Hits 50 km a Day in Spring Break Training Camp

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...
1 comment
Read more

Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 Hakone Ekiden

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...
3 comments
Read more

70th Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden

The 70th running of the Yamagata-ken Judan Ekiden happened over the start of the Golden Week holidays, a 3-day, 29-leg race covering 306.9 km around the northern prefecture of Yamagata. There used to be a lot more of these races where people from the prefecture run for their hometown teams on a Tour de Whatever prefecture or area it happens to be held in, but Yamagata's is one of the few to have survived this long. And amazingly enough, local broadcaster YBC live streamed the entire thing on Youtube. There aren't many corporate teams in the mostly rural area, so runners from the ND Software corporate team played a heavy role, its 2 best runners Masato Arao and Ryoma Takeuchi winning their stages on Day 2 with Takeuchi doubling to anchor the Kita-Murayama team to an overall 5th-place finish, and Koichi Shoji breaking the 2nd leg CR on Day 1 and winning the 2nd-to-last stage on Day 3 to play a key role in the Yamagata city team taking the overall win in 16:06:51, 3:09/km ...
1 comment
Read more