Skip to main content

Iizawa and Nakagawa Break Meet Records - National University Individual Track and Field Championships Day One Results



Usually a 2nd-tier meet held in June every year in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, this year the National University Individual Track and Field Championships have been moved up to this weekend with a full schedule of events and top-level collegiate talent.

Friday's opening day kicked off with a meet record in the men's 1500 m from Kazuto Iizawa (Tokai Univ.). Iizawa took almost 2 seconds off the old record to win in 3:44.54, with teammate Jin Mizoguchi also under the old record in 3:46.49 for 2nd. The top 9 in the final were all under 3:50, pretty good for a Japanese collegiate meet. Sheila Cherotich (Meiji Kokusai Iryo Univ.) was a second off the women's 1500 m meet record, winning in 4:21.75 over Saki Katagihara (Tsukuba Univ.).

The meet record also went in the men's hammer throw, with winner Tatsuto Nakagawa (Kyushu Kyoritsu Univ.) throwing 70.85 m and 2nd-place Shota Fujita (Nihon Univ.) also over the old record at 70.56 m. Remi Katsuya took the women's hammer throw with a 59.96 m throw to make it a double win for Kyushu Kyoritsu University. Nanako Tamaoki (Kokushikan Univ.) tied her own women's 100 mH meet record, running 13.30 (+0.5) to win the final.

This meet usually only goes up to 5000 m, but the addition of a 10000 m this year brought in some bigger names. National ekiden champion Meijo University captain Narumi Kobayashi won the women's 10000 m in an easy 33:21.48 with 2nd through 4th all less than a second behind. Kobayashi will face #1 collegian Seira Fuwa (Takushoku Univ.) in Sunday's 5000 m. Runners from 2021 Hakone Ekiden 2nd-placer Soka University surprisingly took the top two spots in the men's 10000 m, Jun Kasai getting the win in 28:30.65 and Yudai Shimazu 2nd in 28:38.27. In 3rd was the team that beat them at Hakone, Komazawa University, repped by Kotaro Shinohara in 28:43.03.

Olympian Rachid Muratake (Juntendo Univ.) was under the meet record in the men's 110 mH with a wind-aided 13.43 (+2.6) to win the final. His teammate Kazuhiro Tateiwa took the men's 10000 mRW by over 30 seconds in 40:19.71. Hiromichi Yoshida (Kinzakigun Univ.) won the men's long jump with a 7.85 m (+0.6) jump. Ayaka Kora (Tsukuba Univ.) won the women's long jump at 6.20 m (-0.1). Rena Tanaka (Kagawa Univ.) won the women's pole vault, clearing 4.00 m on her first attempt. Sae Takemoto (Saga Sports Univ.) took the women's javelin, throwing 58.02 m.

The National University Individual Championships continue Saturday and Sunday.

© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Stefan said…
I'm not sure what to think of Narumi Kobayashi's 10000m run as it is 2 minutes outside her PB of 31:22.34 which she set July last year. Perhaps she is still building in her training and conserved energy knowing she has to run in the 5000m on Sunday. I'd expect Seira Fuwa to run a good time on Sunday. How good? I can't wait to find out.

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...

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...

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...