japan running news

After taking silver in the Hangzhou Asian Games 10000 m, former NR holder Ririka Hironaka was back in the 5000 m to try again for gold. And you can't say she didn't try. Hironaka immediately dictated the terms of the race, leading the first 1000 m in 3:00.43 and most of the way to 2000 m in 6:04.28 before pulling into the 2nd lane to let Ethiopian Bahraini Bontu Edao Rebitu do some of the work. The pace immediately slowed, with 3000 m and 4000 m splits of 9:14.44 and 12:24.30, until Hironaka attacked again. Over the last 1000 m she accelerated steadily and one by one cracked all three African-born athletes and India's Anita until the only one left behind her was 3000 m SC silver medalist Parul Chaudhary of India. On the back straight Hironaka managed to open some distance on Chaudhary and it looked like she might actually pull off the win, but with less than 50 m to go Chaudhary reeled her back in to take gold in 15:14.75 to Hironaka's 15:15.34, a 2:51.04 closing k

Women's pole vault national record holder Misaki Morota kicked off the evening session on the fourth day of athletics competition at the Hangzhou Asian Games with a new NR and a silver medal. Morota cleared every height from 3.80 m to 4.40 m on her first attempt, then did it again at 4.48 m, 7 cm over her old record. China's Ling Li and Chung Niu only jumped once each, both clearing 4.30 m on their first attempts, leaving all three women to go for 4.53 m. Li made it on her first attempt, but both Morota and Niu failed, leaving Li in gold, Morota in silver and Niu in the bronze position. Li went on from there to make it over 4.63 m, breaking her own Games record by 3 cm. In the men's 200 m final, Koki Ueyama took the final in 20.60 (-0.2), beating Saudi Abdullah Akbar Mohammed by 0.03 to win Japan's first athletics gold medal in Hangzhou. Chun-Han Yang of Taiwan edged out veteran Femi Ogunode of Qatar for bronze, 20.74 to 20.75. A few minutes later Shunya Takayama

Opposite the Hangzhou Asian Games and World Road Running Championships, the Continental Tour Bronze Yogibo Athletics Challenge Cup meet took place this weekend in Niigata. The highlight on Saturday came in its last race, the men’s 5000 m A-heat, where 20-year-old Shunsuke Yoshii , a 2nd-year at Hakone Ekiden runner-up Chuo University , ran 13:22.01 for the win after getting quality pacing almost the entire way from pacer Amos Bett (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.). Chuo 4th-year Shota Nakano was 2nd in 13:28.04 and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) 3rd in 13:29.12. Combined with their older brothers Yamato Yoshii and Kazuki Tamura , Yoshii and Tamura now stand as the fastest and 3rd-fastest brothers over 5000 m in Japanese history. Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) handled pacing work in the women’s 5000 m, where Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) was the last one left standing at Akidor’s pace with a 15:36.47 for the win. 2nd-placer Yuna Takahashi ran 15:42.37, with 3rd and 4th-place Mikun

  After three days of athletics competition at the Hangzhou Asian Games Japan has yet to score gold, but its haul of silver and bronze medals more than doubled over the course of the two days. Men's 400 m NR holder Kentaro Sato took silver Saturday, starting slow as Fuga Sato did the leading in the first half of the race, then reeling in the competition over the last 120 m. Asian record holder Yousef Ahmed Masrahi of Saudi Arabia got away from him, just, winning gold in 45.55 with Sato in 45.57. Bahraini Abbas Yusuf Ali knocked Fuga Sato off the podium with a PB 45.65, Fuga 4th in 45.70. It took til Sunday night for the next medal to land, with Ryoma Aoki and Seiya Sunada going 2-3 in the men's 3000 m steeplechase. Favorite Avinash Mukund Sable of India took it out fast with a 2:40.97 first 1000 m, too fast to sustain but enough to set put him far out front for most of the race. Sable led at 2000 m with 5:27.48 before starting to fade, giving Aoki hope as he closed har

  Athletics started Friday at the Hangzhou Asian Games , with Japanese athletes scoring medals in 3 of the day's 5 finals. Yutaro Murayama and Nanako Fujii kicked it off at 7:00 a.m. in the 20 km race walk. Murayama was the only man able to go with Chinese duo Jun Zhang and Zhaozhao Wang , but both pulled away to make it a 1-2 for the Games hosts in the opening event. Zhang took gold in 1:23:00, Wang silver in 1:24:08 with Murayama 33 seconds back in 1:24:41 for bronze. Tomohiro Noda was well back in 4th in 1:27:08, having served a 21-second penalty mid-race. Starting 10 minutes later, the women's race podium ended up looking exactly the same but with very different race development. China's Jiauyu Yang and Zhenxia Ma were way out front most of the way and couldn't have been closer at the end, Yang taking gold in 1:30:03 and Ma silver in 1:30:04. Fujii was almost a kilometer behind in 1:33:49 for silver, with teammate Yukiko Umeno 4th in 1:39:44. In the evening s

  The biggest international championships outside the Olympics are underway in Hangzhou, China, with 12,500 athletes from 45 countries representing 60% of the world’s population competing across 61 sports at the 19th Asian Games . Athletics runs Sept. 29 to Oct. 5, and while official event entry lists haven’t been released yet JRN has pieced them together from the national team entry lists in the events where Japanese athletes will be competing. Additions and corrections welcome, and we’ll update the lists below as official entry and start lists are released. Complete meet schedule and results here .  4 Japanese athletes and one relay team arrive in Hangzhou ranked #1 in their events. The gold medalist at July’s Asian Championships, NR holder Sumire Hata leads the women’s long jump field at 6.97 m, with a 21 cm margin over India’s Shaili Singh and another 11 cm over China’s Shiqi Xiong and Sri Lanka’s Lakshini Sandaradura . Kentaro Sato is the fastest in the men’s 400 m field with

  The town of Kokonoe, Oita canceled the 28th Kokonoe Kyushu Invitational High School Ekiden on Sept. 24 after athletes were stung by killer hornets and the nest could not be removed. The ekiden had been previously canceled due to typhoons and the coronavirus pandemic, but it was the first time in its history that it was canceled because of killer hornets. According to the town's Board of Education, 18 boys' teams from schools from the prefectures in Kyushu and from Tokushima Prefecture had been invited by organizers to run the ekiden, a 7-stage, 42.195 km race around the Kokonoe countryside. While practicing on the course the day before the race, a total of 22 high school athletes from teams located in Fukuoka, Saga, Miyazaki and Kagoshima were attacked and stung by killer hornets. At least 3 athletes from Miyazaki and Kagoshima were taken to the hospital for treatment, but there were no serious injuries. After the incident was reported, town officials investigated and located

  The National Corporate Track and Field Championships in Gifu were the main track action this weekend, but there were also two big time trial meets in the greater Tokyo area. At the Nittai University Time Trials meet in Yokohama Saturday, Charles Kamau Wanjiku (Musashino Gakuin Univ.) was right up there with the best in the corporate leagues, soloing a 27:29.56 to win the B-heat by over 40 seconds. Antipas Kibet (Komori Corp.) won what was technically the A-heat in 27:57.48, with the next three runners including Taisei Nakamura (Yakult) squeezing under 28 minutes, in Nakamura's case in 27:59.96. Erika Tanoura (Sekisui Kagaku) won the women's 5000 m A-heat in 15:47.07, but there wasn't much difference from the B-heat where Momoa Yamada (Tamagawa Univ.) won in 15:50.92. The women's 3000 m was low-key, with Harumi Okamoto (Yamada Holdings) taking the A-heat in 9:10.92 and the next four runners all getting under 9:12. The men's 1500 m saw one noteworthy perform

  The 2023 National Corporate Track and Field Championships wrapped up Sunday at Gifu's Nagaragawa Stadium. Two of the three recent sub-13:10 men in the 5000 m took the top positions, Joseph Karanja (Aichi Seiko) getting the win in 13:27.31 and Cosmas Mwangi (Chugoku Denryoku) 2nd in 13:27.94. Emmanuel Maru (Toyota Boshoku) was a close 3rd in 13:28.54, with Yuto Imae (GMO) the fastest Japanese placer in 13:39.47 for 9th. Favorite Judy Jepngetich (Shiseido) dropped another sub-15 to win the women's 5000 m in 14:57.63, with Esther Muthoni (Nitori) right behind her in 14:58.03. Susan Kamotho (Yamada Holdings) was 3rd in 15:04.73, with Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) the top Japanese finisher at 7th in 15:33.69. In other track results: In the men's 800 m, Daichi Setoguchi (Team SSP) won the national title in 1:48.81, Nozomi Tanaka (Team NB) taking the women's race in 2:03.98. 400 m national record holder Kentaro Sato (Fujitsu) won the men's 200 m fin

https://worldathletics.org/news/report/tigst-assefa-world-marathon-record-berlin-kipchoge-2023 Japanese half marathon national record holders Yusuke Ogura (Yakult) and Hitomi Niiya (Sekisui Kagaku) both ran the Berlin Marathon. Ogura finished 51st in 2:17:39 a few steps ahead of women's runner-up Sheila Chepkirui of Kenya, with Niiya 11th in 2:23:08. Although Niiya’s run was billed as an attempt at the 2:19:12 national record, she was never on NR pace and slowed continuously after 10 km.  Complete results .

  Summer seemed to finally break right on the autumnal equinox, just in time for the second day of the 2023 National Corporate Track and Field Championships in Gifu. Things kicked off with the women's 10000 m race walk, where Kaori Kawazoe (SDF Academy) took the national title in a leisurely 48:26.31 by 8 seconds over Nami Kumagai (Sekisho). The men's 10000 mRW didn't happen for another 7 hours, but it saw MR holder Koki Ikeda (Asahi Kasei) take the win in 38:46.81 with Ryo Hamanishi (Sunbelx) 8 seconds behind. WR holder Eiki Takahashi (Fujitsu) was 6th in 41:56.86, with Daisuke Matsunaga (Fujitsu) 8th in 42:50.60 in his final race before retiring and becoming an assistant coach at Toyo University . The men's 100 m heats saw some of the aging greats of Japanese men's sprinting back in action after sitting on the bench while younger talent represented in Budapest last month. NR holder Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) won H1 in 10.26 (+2.4), 2010 World U20 Championships

  No surprises on the first day of the 2023 National Corporate Track and Field Championships at Gifu's Nagaragawa Stadium as Japan-based Kenyan women swept all three track finals. Janet Nyiva (Panasonic) won the expected one-on-one against Esther Wangui (Starts) in the junior women's 3000 m, coming up short of Rosemary Wanjiru 's meet record but still dipping under 9 minutes with an 8:58.03 for the win versus Wangui's 9:01.91. Kadogo Chebotibin (SID Group) was 3rd in 9:11.03 with Mitsu Ozaki (Sysmex) the top Japanese at 4th in 9:19.59. In the women's 1500 m, Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) and Esther Muthoni (Nitori) both went way under the meet record, Akidor scoring the win in 4:05.29 over 5 seconds under the old record and Muthoni 2nd in 4:06.42, 4 seconds under the record. Two athletes who left the 2022 National Corporate Women's Ekiden champion Shiseido team finished 3rd and 4th just off the record, Tomoka Kimura (Sekisui Kagaku) 3rd in 4:11.51 and W

The National Corporate Track and Field Championships happen in Gifu over the next three days, a late-season meetup for non-distance runners in Japan’s corporate leagues and a chance for distance runners to see where they’re at after summer base training just before ekiden season kicks off. The entry lists always promise a lot that the start lists can’t deliver, and especially with the Asian Games starting next week it’s inevitable that a lot of the big names won’t really be there.  Complete meet schedule here . As of this writing only the distance event start lists have been released. The junior women’s 3000 m at 17:00 Friday is pretty much a head-to-head between Janet Nyiva (Panasonic), 8:49.32, and Esther Wangui (Starts), 8:53.21, the main question being whether they can hit Tokyo Marathon winner Rosemary Wanjiru ’s 8:48.44 meet record from 2014. The women’s 10000 m starts at 18:45 Friday and features Pauline Kamulu (Route Inn Hotels) as its top seed at 30:20.97. All sub-31:30,

The Tango University Ekiden , the major ekiden for schools in the Kansai Region, will hold its 85th edition on Nov. 18. In 2013 the race returned to the Tango area of northern Kyoto after 9 years being held on the shores of Lake Biwa. To commemorate the event's landmark anniversary, 6-time Hakone Ekiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University will make a special appearance in the Tango University Ekiden this year without counting in its results. AGU head coach Susumu Hara had approached the organizers in the Kansai collegiate athletics federation some time ago about his team running, and with the 85th anniversary on the horizon plans were finalized. In order to cover AGU's travel from Tokyo and other costs for its athletes and staff, local government officials conducted a "government crowdfunding" scheme in which locals could donate a portion of their taxes. The scheme has been used in the last three years to fund a TV broadcast of the race, and this time the target of ¥1

On Sept. 20 the JAAF announced that three members of Japan's team for the Sept. 29-Oct. 5 Hangzhou Asian Games have withdrawn due to injury. According to the announcement, Arisa Kimishima , the only Japanese woman scheduled to run the 100 m and 200 m, is out with plantar fasciitis. Haruka Kokai , one of two women in the 10000 m, has sustained a stress fracture in one of her feet. Kazuto Iizawa , one of two entrants in the men's 1500 m, is suffering from lower back pain. source article: https://www.rikujyokyogi.co.jp/archives/114700 translated and edited by Brett Larner

Men's 90+ 100 m world record holder  Hiroo Tanaka  has become a household name in Aomori. On the Sept. 18 Respect for the Aged Day national holiday Tanaka, 92, planned to go for his own world record at a masters track and field meet held in Hirosaki, Aomori. 140 people took part in the Aomori Masters Track and Field Championships, but there was no question who drew the most attention.  Tanaka competed in the 400 m, and 2 hours later lined up again in the 100 m. He started well, but after losing momentum in the middle part of the race he finished in 18.17. Having been suffering from lower back problems recently, that time was almost a second off his best, but Tanaka still had enough in him to come back and run the 200 m afterward.  "My typical training isn't that hard, and I'm able to work out 5 days a week," he said. "Once I turn 95 I don't know if there'll be any other competitors or not. The number will be close to zero, so my chances will be very g

The 2023 National University Track and Field Championships wrapped with two meet records, one as old as one of the women who broke it, in its final two events. Ai Watanabe of Sonoda Gakuen Joshi University started her afternoon with a win in the 800 m final at 12:30 in 2:07.89, over half a second up on 2nd-placer Mahiro Hasegawa (Kyoto Kyoiku Univ.). Two hours later she was back to run 2nd for Sonoda in the 4x400 m. Yuzuki Nakao put them into the lead, and Watanabe, Hinata Tochio and anchor Marin Adachi carried the momentum all the way to a 3:36.71 MR, breaking Fukushima University 's 2004-era 3:37.30 record. 2nd-placer Fukuoka University just missed joining them under the record too at 3:37.41, with Waseda University close behind in 3:37.65 for 3rd. Immediately following that, after its first three runners built a solid lead the Waseda men looked to be in range of not just the meet record but the collegiate 4x400 m record of 3:03.71 from 2000. Just behind them, Budapest Wo

Early season injuries might have kept him home from Budapest, but Rachid Muratake (Juntendo University) showed he's more than just back with the performance of the meet on day 3 of the National University Track and Field Championships in Kumagaya, Saitama. After leading the men's 110 mH heats with a conservative 13.52 (+1.5) and the semifinals with an even more conservative 13.71 (-1.0), Muratake blazed a 13.04 (-0.9) to win the final. That took 0.25 off former Juntendo teammate Shunsuke Izumiya 's meet record, 0.02 off Izumiya's collegiate record, and tied the national record Izumiya set earlier this year as a pro. It also put Muratake alongside Izumiya in the top 10 worldwide this year, no small feat while still in college. 2nd-placer Ryota Machi (Kokusai Budo Univ.) was a distant afterthought at 13.72. In the men's hammer throw Shota Fukuda (Nihon Univ.) did the nearly impossible, breaking the great Koji Murofushi 's 1996 meet record 71.84 m with a 5th-ro