Skip to main content

National Track and Field Championships Day One Preview and Streaming


Road events, combined events and the 10000 m have already been held, but the rest of this year's National Track and Field Championships happen Thursday through Sunday at Yanmar Stadium Nagai in Osaka. Thursday will be streamed above starting at noon local time, with the rest of the days also to be streamed on the same JAAF channel. Just be aware that the main events in the last 2 or 3 hours each day will be on TV instead, either NHK's BS1 or general channels.

Nationals this year are mostly about qualifying the Oregon World Championships. The basic rules for selection are that a top 3 finish at Nationals by someone with the standard, either there or earlier in the window, will put them the team. Anyone who makes top 3 without the standard will have until the June 26 deadline to chase it, at which point the JAAF has the option to fill any open slots with people who have the standard or are in the quota in their event without having made top 3 at Nationals.

Start lists for Thursday are here. Complete entry lists and withdrawals are here, with the daily timetable here. A breakdown of Thursday's action:

On the track, the only final of the day is the men's 5000 m. Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) is the only man with the 13:13.50 standard, having run 13:10.69 in Nobeoka earlier this season, so all he needs is a top 3 finish. Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) and Takuma Sunaoka (Konica Minolta) are the only others who've gone under 13:20 in the window, with the highest-ranking man after Endo, Hiroki Matsueda (Fujitsu) still short of that level. There's not much chance Shiojiri or Sunaoka will go for the standard here, so expect them to go for top 3 with Endo at Nationals and then for the time June 22 at the Hokuren Distance Challenge.

In the men's high jump final, Naoto Tobe (JAL) is the only one who has gone over the 2.33 m standard before, but he hasn't during this qualification window. He, Tomohiro Shinno (Kyudenko) and Ryoichi Akamatsu (Awas) are all in the 32-deep quota, Tobe and Shinno comfortably at 14th and 18th, Akamatsu not so comfortably at 26th, and good performances by any of them here will increase their chances of surviving the June 26 qualification deadline.

Sumire Hata (Shibata Kogyo) is the only Japanese woman in the long jump quota at 22nd out of 32. Every point will count here. At 59th it would take a massive performance from Ayaka Kora (Tsukuba Univ.), or a great one here and one more by June 26, just to make it to 32nd, so realistically Hata is the only one with a chance of being in Eugene. Nanaka Kori (Niigata Albirex RC) is the top-ranked Japanese woman and Masateru Yugami (Toyota) the top man in the discus throw, both ranked 46th and both in the same situation as Kora.

The women's and men's 100 m, 400 m and 1500 m all have their qualifying rounds Thursday. There's no chance any women will make Oregon in the 100 m and 400 m, but the Nationals schedule has been set up to give Nozomi Tanaka (Toyota Jidoshokki) the max chance of doubling in the 1500 m and 5000 m. She's the only one with the 1500 m standard, with Ran Urabe (Sekisui Kagaku) just barely inside the quota at 40th.

Things aren't where they had been in the men's 100 m, with nobody having cleared the 10.05 standard, former NR holder Yoshihide Kiryu (Nihon Seimei) the only one in the quota at 38th of 48, Aska Cambridge (Nike) a DNS, and NR holder Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) not even entered. It'll take a comeback from people like Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko), Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) or Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Tumbleweed TC) to make it, or even to set Japan up for a competitive 4x100 m team.

In the men's 400 m both Kaito Kawabata (Chukyo Univ. AC) and Fuga Sato (Nasu Kankyo) are in the quota, Kawabata at 34th of 48 and Sato at 45th. The top man in the last few years, Julian Walsh (Fujitsu) is just outside at 56th. With both the men's 1500 m heats and 5000 m scheduled for Thursday the men weren't given the same preferential treatment as Tanaka, meaning Endo, 2nd-fastest at 3:36.69, is a scratch. NR holder Kazuki Kawamura (Toenec) is just off the 3:35.00 standard at 3:35.42, with 6 others under 3:40. The fastest Japanese man this season, Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.), is sitting the 1500 m out to focus on his main event, the 3000 m SC on Saturday.

Nationals are doubling as the U20 National Championships this year, and also on Thursday's program are U20 finals for women's and men's 5000 m, men's high jump, women's long jump, and women's and men's discus throw plus qualifying rounds for 100 m, 400 m and 1500 m.

© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Rigajags said…
Looking forward to those 5000m tomorrow. Endo Is a step above the others,very curious to see Keita sato battle with Yoshii, Fujimoto and Ito among college guys. Shinohara has been doing well since january but the field might be too much for him.

Would have been super interesting to have Miura in this mix. Well, he will enjoy winning his title on saturday :)

Most-Read This Week

Japan's Olympic Marathon Team Meets the Press

With renewed confidence, Japan's Olympic marathon team will face the total 438 m elevation difference hills of Paris this summer. The members of the women's and men's marathon teams for August's Paris Olympics appeared at a press conference in Tokyo on Mar. 25 in conjunction with the Japan Marathon Championship Series III (JMC) awards gala. Women's Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki (Daiichi Seimei) said she was riding a wave of motivation in the wake of the new women's national record. When she watched Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) set the record at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon on TV, Suzuki said she was, "absolutely stunned." Her coach Sachiko Yamashita told her afterward, "When someone breaks the NR, things change," and Suzuki found herself saying, "I want to take my shot." After training for a great run in Paris, she said, "I definitely want to break the NR in one of my marathons after that." Mao

Weekend Racing Roundup

  China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from  Jie He  at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country. At the Tokushima Marathon , club runner Yuhi Yamashita  won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane  winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa , 2nd in 2:49:46.  At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura  (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda  won the men's race in 2:20:08.  Chika Yokota  won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33.  Yuki Yamada  won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km.  Naoki Inoue  won the 16th r

Sprinter Shoji Tomihisa Retires From Athletics at 105

A retirement ceremony for local masters track and field legend Shoji Tomihisa , 105, was held May 13 at his usual training ground at Miyoshi Sports Park Field in Miyoshi, Hiroshima. Tomihisa began competing in athletics at age 97, setting a Japanese national record 16.98 for 60 m in the men's 100~104 age group at the 2017 Chugoku Masters Track and Field meet. Last year Tomihisa was the oldest person in Hiroshima selected to run as a torchbearer in the Tokyo Olympics torch relay. Due to the coronavirus pandemic the relay on public roads was canceled, and while he did take part in related ceremonies his run was ultimately canceled. Tomihisa recently took up the shot put, but in light of his fading physical strength he made the decision to retire from competition. Around 30 members of the Shoji Tomihisa Booster Club attended the retirement ceremony. After receiving a bouquet of flowers from them Tomihisa in turn gave them a colored paper placard on which he had written the characters