Skip to main content

Weekend Overseas Japanese Results

Aiming for Olympic trials qualification at Sunday's Rotterdam Marathon, Sakiho Tsutsui (Yamada Holdings) had the closest thing to a good race out of the four elite-level Japanese athletes competing abroad this weekend. Needing to run 2:27:15 for qualification after running a 2:28:45 PB just five weeks ago in Nagoya, Tsutsui was just off target at 5km in 17:29, 2:27:33 pace. She fell progressively further off as she went but rallied in the last 10 km to finish 8th overall in 2:29:09, a solid effort at just 24 seconds off her Nagoya best.

Also in Rotterdam, Takashi Ichida (Asahi Kasei) needed to run 2:10:45, just under 3:06/km pace, after a 2:09:15 PB at Beppu-Oita the first weekend of February. Shunya Kikuchi (Chugoku Denryoku) only needed 2:11:40, just over 3:07/km, off a 2:08:20 PB in Osaka at the end of February that put him as the 2nd-fastest Japanese man not to have qualified for October's Olympic trials yet.

Mystifyingly, both went out at 3:00/km only to crash and burn. Ichida fell off after only 15 km, eventually finishing in 2:16:10. Kikuchi lasted longer, making it until 25 km only to crash even harder with a 2:21:09 finishing time. Their pacing strategies said a lot about the quality of goal setting in the traditional powerhouse corporate teams. With the May 31 deadline for qualification just over the horizon it's not likely, but not impossible, that either Ichida or Kikuchi will turn up at the May 28 Ottawa Marathon for one desperate last swing.

The only athlete already qualified for the trials to race abroad this weekend, Haruka Yamaguchi (AC Kita) had a disappointing run at the Boston Marathon. Hoping to match her sub-2:30 winning time from last August's Sapporo Marathon, Yamaguchi was well behind that within the first 5 km, splitting only 18:11 there and struggling the rest of the way to a 2:44:17 finish in 44th. In tears afterward, Yamaguchi told Japanese media that there hadn't been anything specifically wrong, and that she just hadn't felt right right from the start. Yamaguchi plans to run July's Gold Coast Marathon before the MGC Race Olympic trials on Oct. 15.

© 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Akasaki PBs in Chicago, Takeuchi 2nd in Perth

Four elite-level Japanese athletes were at the Chicago Marathon Sunday. In the women's race, Yuka Akasaki (Kraftia), 6th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, ran the second-fastest time of her career, 2:23:18 for 11th. Her husband Akira Akasaki (Kraftia), also 6th in Paris and runner-up in Berlin last year, better his PB by 28 seconds with a 2:05:47 for 9th, the fastest time this year by a Japanese man and his second-straight World Marathon Majors top 10 finish. NR holder Suguru Osako (Li Ning) was about 3 minutes off his goal of a new Asian record with a 2:07:34 for 14th, with half marathon NR holder Tomoki Ota (Toyota) struggling a bit to find his feet in his marathon debut, running 2:11:52 for 26th off a 1:02:57 first half. At the Perth Running Festival marathon in Australia, 2025 Warsaw Marathon winner Ryoma Takeuchi (ND Software) had a great head-to-head race against Kenyan Dominic Ngeno , together through 10 km, then dropping as far as 1:42 behind at one point before...
2 comments
Read more

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox  for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...
82 comments
Read more