The National Track and Field Championships head into their back half Saturday in Osaka. Streaming starts at 10:15 a.m. local time and NHK's TV broadcast at 3:30 p.m., with the daily schedule here, start lists here, and live results here.
On the track, the last race of the day is its biggest, the men's 3000 mSC featuring NR holder Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.). A top 8 placer at the Olympics last year while still in his teens, Miura also fell in a race last year, got up, and still won in NR time. Without something spectacular happening there's almost no chance he won't win or at the very least make the Oregon team. His fellow Olympic team members Kosei Yamaguchi (Aisan Kogyo) and Ryoma Aoki (Honda) are both in the 45-deep quota at this point, Yamaguchi at 38th and Aoki at 40th, but with things too close to be safe they'll be going for the standard here. Yasunari Kusu (Ami AC) is 42nd in the quota, and beating any of the three ahead of him would give him an outside chance of making it through if the quota doesn't fill in the next two weeks.
The top 3 women in the steeple, Yuno Yamanaka (Ehime Ginko), Reimi Yoshimura (Daito Bunka Univ.) and Yukari Ishizawa (Hitachi), are currently ranked 49th, 50th and 51st and will need big runs to have a chance of getting into the quota.
The men's 400 mH final has all three contenders for the World Championships team, Kazuki Kurokawa (Hosei Univ.), Masaki Toyoda (Fujitsu) and Takayuki Kishimoto (Fujitsu). Kurokawa is the favorite for the national title and the only one with the Worlds standard, but with both Toyoda and Kishimoto on the edge of making the 40-deep quota there's a chance Japan could produce a full squad.
100 mH NR holder Masumi Aoki (77 Ginko) is inside the quota, and with the fastest times in the heats and semis it's pretty likely she'll be Oregon-bound. The main question is whether Mako Fukube (NK Kogyo) can score enough points here to join her. 2nd-fastest woman Hitomi Shimura (Shizuoka T&F Assoc.) looks to be too far down the rankings to have a shot at Worlds but should still make top 3 here.
Three men in the pole vault have qualifying marks of 5.70 m, Kosei Takekawa (Marumoto Sangyo) Seito Yamamoto (Toyota) and Takuma Ishikawa (Tokyo Tokai), but of them Yamamoto is the only one in or near the quota at 30th of 32. Masaki Ejima (Fujitsu) is just outside at 33rd, and good performances from him and Yamamoto could send both to Oregon.
Mariko Morimoto (Uchida Kensetsu AC) is the favorite in the women's triple jump at 13.56 m, but Maoko Takashima (Kyudenko) is close behind at 13.48 m and should be in position to apply pressure on Morimoto.
The women's javelin throw is the only senior throw event of the day, starring NR holder Haruka Kitaguchi (JAL) and featuring current Worlds quota occupants Momone Ueda (Zenrin) and Sae Takemoto (Saga Sports Assoc.). As such it's one of the few other events where Japan has a shot at sending a complete roster of 3.
In qualifying rounds, two-time national champ Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Tumbleweed TC) is giving the men's 200 m a miss, leaving Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) the favorite to make the Oregon team as the only Japanese man currently in the quota. But the great Shota Iizuka (Mizuno) is fastest in the Nationals qualifying window at 20.34, and with both Wataru Inuzuka (Suzuki) and Kotaro Ito (Tokyo Gas) both faster than Koike's 20.46 too a top 3 placing from Koike is not a sure thing. Women's 100 m runner-up Mei Kodama (Mizuno) leads the 200 m heats starting list at 23.46, but winner Arisa Kimishima (DK Shiken) and others are close behind.
It's not likely anyone in the men's or women's 800 m will be in Oregon, Mikuto Kaneko (Chuo Univ.) the top-ranked man at 1:45.85 and 63rd in the rankings and Nozomi Tanaka (Toyota Jidoshokki) the best woman at 2:02.36 and 59th. Kaneko is closer to the standard at 0.65 sec off, but it would take a national record for him to get it.
The 110 mH heats feature another athlete coming to Nationals with the Worlds standard, NR holder Shunsuke Izumiya (Sumitomo Denko) having run 13.28 (-0.2) at the Olympics last summer. Olympic alternate Rachid Muratake (Juntendo Univ.) is currently 35th in the 40-deep quota and could survive, with Shusei Nomoto (Ehime T&F Assoc.) and Shunya Takayama (Zenrin) both in range of it if they run up to potential and make the final.
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