Skip to main content

IAU 100 km World Championships Preview and Streaming


The IAU 100 km World Championships are this Saturday in Berlin, Germany, and Japan has sent strong teams with every woman under 7:40 and 2 of the 3 men under 6:20 for the 100 km distance. 2018 gold medalist Hideaki Yamauchi (Hamamatsu Hotniks RC) is out after testing positive for coronavirus, but world record holder Nao Kazami (Aisan Kogyo) remains to lead the men. The fastest non-Japanese athlete on the entry list is American Rajpaul Pannu at 6:28:31. Considering that 3rd Japanese man Junpei Yamaguchi (Eldoreso) has run 6:22:35 it looks like the potential for a Japanese men's podium sweep is there, but things are never that easy.

2018 bronze medalist Mai Fujisawa (Sapporo Excel AC) and 7:27:46 runner Miho Nakata (Chiba T&F Assoc.) lead the women. Only three other women in the field, European record holder Dominika Stelmach (Poland), Radka Churanova (Czech Republic) and Camille Chaigneau (France), have broken 7:30, giving Nakata a good shot at an individual medal if she can perform up to the same level. For both the men's and women's lineups, team medal chances are looking very good.




Streaming starts at 6:00 a.m. local time Saturday, 13:00 in Japan. Most of the race will be on the stream above, with the finish apparently on a separate stream below. Live results will be hereComplete entry lists are here. Full Japanese team rosters:

Men
Nao Kazami (Aisan Kogyo) - 6:09:14 (Lake Saroma 2018)
Haruki Okayama (Comodi Iida) - 6:16:44 (Shibamata 2022)
Hideaki Yamauchi (Hamamatsu Hotniks RC) - 6:18:22 (Los Alcazares, 2016) - scratch
Junpei Yamaguchi (Eldoreso) - 6:22:35 (Shibamata 2021)

Women
Miho Nakata (Chiba T&F Assoc.) - 7:27:46 (Shibamata 2022)
Mai Fujisawa (Sapporo Excel AC) - 7:31:53 (Shibamata 2022)
Mikiko Ota (Kyoto Sumiyama RC) - 7:34:18 (Shibamata 2022)
Aiko Kanematsu (Team RxL) - 7:38:38 (Shibamata 2022)


photo c/o Eldoreso, © 2022 Tarzan Aqzawa all rights reserved
© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Saku Chosei H.S. Makes It 2 In a Row - National High School Ekiden Boys' Race

While the girls' race was a blowout by 2022 champ Nagano Higashi H.S. , the boys' race at Sunday's National High School Ekiden was a tense battle of turnover that saw all of the final top four teams take a stab at leading. 2023 3rd-placer Yachiyo Shoin H.S. handled the first 2 of the 7 stages in the 42.195 km race, with lead runner Rui Suzuki delivering a bold run on the 10.0 km First Stage that produced the fastest-ever time by a Japanese runner on the stage, 28:43, and put Yachiyo Shoin 29 seconds out front. Last year's Fifth Stage CR breaker Tetsu Suzuki ran Yachiyo Shoin down to put 2023 champ Saku Chosei H.S. into 1st on the 8.1075 km Third Stage, but Genta Sugano of last year's 8th-placer Sendai Ikuei H.S. had other plans and took the lead on the 8.0875 km Fourth Stage. Smiling and fist pumping to the crowd almost the entire way, Taketo Tsukada of last year's 6th-placer Omuta H.S. moved up from 3rd to 1st by 2 seconds over Saku Chosei on the 3.0 k...

Japan Post Holds Off Sekisui Kagaku to Win Queens Ekiden National Title

  Japan Post  was back on top at the Queens Ekiden corporate women's national championships Sunday in Sendai, holding off last year's winner Sekisui Kagaku  over the second half of a race that came as close as 1 second to take 1st with a final margin of victory of 27 seconds. Sekisui Kagaku was out fast with a win on the 7.0 km opening leg by Erika Tanoura  and a new CR for the 12:56 second leg by Yuma Yamamoto , 17 seconds better than her own CR from last year. Last year's 4th-placer Shiseido  briefly led on the 10.6 km third leg with an excellent 33:17 stage win from Rino Goshima , but behind her Japan Post's Ririka Hironaka  returned from her latest injury problems to pass Sekisui Kagaku's Sayaka Sato  and hand off 6 seconds ahead. New recruit Caroline Kariba  ran Shiseido down on the 3.6 km fourth leg and put Japan Post 22 seconds ahead of Sekisui Kagaku, but a duel of marathoners between JP's  Ayuko Suzuki  and Sekisui's Hitomi Niiy...

Nagano Higashi Girls Lead Start to Finish to Win National High School Ekiden

2022 National High School Ekiden girls' champion Nagano Higashi H.S. was back in force after a 5th-place finish last year, leading start to finish to win this year's national title Sunday in Kyoto. Lead runner Airi Mashiba kicked it off with a 19:30 stage win on the 6.0 km opening leg, something that head coach Fumio Yokouchi said later that he hadn't been expecting. That ended up being Nagano Higashi's only individual stage win in the 5-leg, 21.0975 km race, but the rest of its team ran well enough to hold a lead that was never less than 11 seconds but never more than 21. Last year's 4th-placer Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. spent most of the race in 2nd, but over the second half of the race Sendai Ikuei H.S. , 2nd last year by just 1 second, came from further back to run Kunei down on the anchor stage thanks in big part to a critical stage win on the 4th leg by Tsubomi Tezuka that put anchor Aoi Hosokawa in position to catch Kunei's Mizuki Oda . Nagano Higashi ...