Skip to main content

Kitaguchi Makes Javelin Final - Tokyo Olympics Athletics Day Five Japanese Results

One of Japan's hopes for a top 8 placing in track and field, women's javelin NR holder Haruka Kitaguchi got off to a good start at the Tokyo Olympics with a season best opening throw of 62.08 m in the qualifying round, just short of the 63.0 m auto-qualifying mark. She wasn't able to improve on that in subsequent throws but advanced to Friday's final with ease, placing 3rd in her group and 6th overall. Kitaguchi is the first Japanese woman to make an Olympic javelin final since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Mirroring the lackluster performances in the men's 100 m, none of the three Japanese men in the 200 m moved on past the first round heats. Jun Yamashita came closest at 20.78 for 5th in the third heat, 0.25 off qualifying on time. In his third Olympics Shota Iizuka was 6th in the opening heat in 21.02, with Abdul Hakim Sani Brown 6th in the second heat in 21.41.

In the evening session, national record holder Shunsuke Izumiya and previous NR holder Taio Kanai easily made it through the heats, Izumiya 2nd in the fourth heat in 13.28 and Kanai 3rd in the fifth heat in 13.41. Third man Shunya Takayama was the only one to falter, 6th in the third heat in 13.98.

The men's 5000 m saw the low point in this Olympics so far for the Japanese team.  In heat one, Yuta Bando was 17th in 14:05.80. In heat two, Bando's Fujitsu teammate Hiroki Matsueda was 18th in 14:15.54. Both finished in the bottom four of the combined field of 37 finishers, enough to give serious doubts about the condition Fujitsu marathoner Shogo Nakamura will be in on Sunday morning.

© 2021 Mika Tokairin, 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