Skip to main content

JAAF to Hold Another Single-Race Trial for Paris Olympic Marathon Team Selection

On June 21 the JAAF announced details on the marathon team selection process for the 2024 Paris Olympics. In broad strokes the plan is to use the same single-race trial format as used in selection for the Tokyo Olympics. The new Marathon Grand Championship race will be held in the fall of 2023, with the top two men and women earning places on the Olympic team. As with Tokyo, the final place will be decided based on performances in the MGC Final Challenge, a designated series of races. Some details will be determined at a later date and remain under consideration at this point.

Translator's note: Since the original Marathon Grand Championship many of the races used for qualifying for it and as part of the winter 2019-20 MGC Final Challenge series have disappeared. The Saitama Women's Marathon is gone, the Fukuoka International Marathon will shut down after this year's 75th running, the Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon is being replaced by the Osaka Marathon, and the Osaka International Women's Marathon is unlikely to survive the larger Osaka Marathon's move from the fall season to February. 

As such, the JAAF is in the process of developing a new Japan Marathon Championship Series to deal with qualifying, selection for World Championships teams, and further development of the level of domestic Japanese marathoning.. More details on the plan here.

Labels:

Comments

Andrew Armiger said…
Glad to see this. MGC Race built intrigue, excitement, and engagement with overseas fans, and apparently that was felt exponentially domestically.
June 22, 2021 at 10:38 PM
Stefan said…
MGC was spell binding viewing for all those interested in distance running. The format worked brilliantly and there was excitement all the way to the very last race. Excellent news! I am already looking forward to this ... after the Olympics :-)
June 24, 2021 at 4:05 AM
Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Heisei Mountaineering Stops Takigahara SDF Base From Scoring 10-Year Streak at Mount Fuji Ekiden

by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title. The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda , winner of the Fuji M...
Post a Comment
Read more

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...
54 comments
Read more

Komazawa University One Step Away From Perfect Season With Hakone Ekiden Day One Win

Already the course record-breaker at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden this season, 2021 Hakone Ekiden champion Komazawa University came one step away from its first-ever triple crown of single-season ekiden wins as it won a highly competitive 2023 Hakone Ekiden Day One over defending champ Aoyama Gakuin University and last year's 6th placer Chuo University . Things got off to an unexpected start when Select Team runner Hayate Nitta of non-qualifier Ikuei University decided to take his one and only Hakone shot and run it up to his ability on the 21.3 km 1st leg even though the rest of the field opted to jog. At one point Nitta had a lead of almost a minute and a half, but as beautiful as it would have been for him to pull it off, Meiji University 's Shunpei Tomita and Komazawa's Kensuke Tsubura still managed to run him down in the final kilometer. Tomita took the stage win in 1:02:44, 1:02:08 half marathon pace vs. his 1:02:10 PB despite the slow s...
4 comments
Read more