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