Momoka Muraoka was the only Japanese athlete in action in the finals on the sixth day of track and field competition at the Tokyo Paralympics. A quintuple medalist at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics including a gold in the women's sitting giant slalom, Muraoka made her summer Paralympic debut in the T54 100 m partly out of sense of staleness and frustration with para-skiing. Making it to the final, she placed 6th out of eight in 16.71, 0.38 behind bronze medalist Cheri Madsen of the U.S.A. Muraoka will have a quick turnaround to the 2022 Beijing Paralympics just over six months away.
The Ageo City Half Marathon is always big, the main race that the coaches of Hakone Ekiden-bound university men's teams use for firming up their entry rosters for the big show. That makes what's basically an idyllic small town race into one of the world's great road races, with depth unmatched anywhere. One of the top-tier people on the start list at 1:02:07, Kodai Miyaoka (Hosei Univ.) took the race out fast, but the entire pack was keying off the fastest man in the race, Reishi Yoshida (Chuo Gakuin Univ.), 1:00:31. Yoshida reeled Miyaoka in before 5 km and kept things steady in the low-1:01 range, wearing down the lead group to around 10 including his CGU teammate Taisei Ichikawa , a quartet from Izumo and National University Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University , 2 runners from local Daito Bunka University , 2:07:54 marathoner Atsumi Ashiwa (Honda), and Australian Ed Goddard . Right after 15 km Komazawa went into action, Yudai Kiyama , Hibiki Murakami and Haru Tanin
Comments