This National Championship was the biggest day in Japanese 10000 m history, four women going under 31 minutes and three men breaking the national record thanks to a combination of the fast track at Tokyo's National Stadium, the Wavelight pacing system, superb pacing work from Kenyans, perfect weather, the continuing evolution in shoe tech, fans allowed onto the track at the Olympic stadium to roar their support, and the carrot of the Paris Olympics hanging just out of reach.
In a lot of ways it was the same race twice, with both the women's and men's races seeing packs of four Japanese athletes, including two teammates, led by a Japan-resident Kenyan pacer locked onto the Wavelight, steady splits just off a historic mark, and a fast last 200 m by the winner to clear the mark. In the women's case it was Judy Jepngetich (Shiseido) leading teammates Rino Goshima and Yuka Takashima, former 5000 m NR holder Ririka Hironaka (Japan Post) and underdog Haruka Kokai (Daiichi Seimei) at just under 31:10 pace.
Hironaka made a one-lap move after halfway to try to pick the pace up, but apart from Jepngetich stopping at 9400 m it was a four-way collaboration until 200 m to go. The only one to have gone under 31:00 before, Hironaka surged from 200 m out to take the win in 30:55.25, the fastest time by a Japanese woman this year. Takashima, Kokai and Goshima held it together to all go under 31 minutes for the first time, taking the number of Japanese women who've ever done it from five to eight.
The men's race was the same, but with a more aggressive pace and a bigger pack. It's hard to overstate how good pacer Kiprono Sitonik (Kurosaki Harima) was. There was zero variation in his pacing. Every 1000 m split from 2000 m to 8000 m projected to exactly 27:20, less than 2 seconds off the Japanese NR, and he sped up after that. Between that and the Wavelight it was just a question of who could hang on, and it came down to four again: teammates Ren Tazawa and Tomoki Ota (Toyota), Olympic steepler Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu), and NR holder Akira Aizawa (Asahi Kasei).
Tazawa started to lose touch with three laps to go, but where Jepngetich had stopped pacing in the women's race Sitonik kept at it, keeping it a four-way race. From 600 m out Shiojiri went to the front, and with 200 m to go he surged again. With a 60-second last lap, in the end he took almost 9 seconds off Aizawa's NR, running 27:09.80 to become the first Japanese man under 27:10. Sitonik was next across the line in a PB 27:12.27, for which give him a fat bonus, and both Ota and Aizawa were over 5 seconds under Aizawa's old record. Tazawa was 4th in a PB 27:22.31, the 4th-best Japanese man ever, and Ayumu Kobayashi (NTT Nishi Nihon) came in at all-time Japanese #7 with a 27:28.13. Ota's younger brother Naoki Ota (Yakult) also ran a PB of 27:52.10 for 11th, making them Japan's all-time fastest brothers.
With this, 37 Japanese men have broken 28 minutes for 10000 m in 2023. Only Kenya has more with 58, 49 of them done in the Japanese system. And between Shiojiri getting under 27:10 today and Keita Sato (Komazawa University) setting an U20 NR of 27:28.50 in a conservative debut at the distance two weeks ago, sub-27 looks to be on the way sooner than later. And with the women tying the U.S.A.'s count of sub-31 athletes for the year, it was about as a good a cap to the Olympic prelude season as anyone could have hoped for. On to 2024.
107th National Championships 10000 m
National Stadium, Tokyo, 10 Dec. 2023
Women
1. Ririka Hironaka (Japan Post) - 30:55.29
2. Yuka Takashima (Shiseido) - 30:57.26 - PB (all-time JPN #6)
3. Haruka Kokai (Daiichi Seimei) - 30:57.67 - PB (all-time JPN #7)
4. Rino Goshima (Shiseido) - 30:58.83 - PB (all-time JPN #8)
5. Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) - 31:45.19 - PB
6. Nagisa Shimotabira (Senko) - 31:48.54 - PB
7. Miyaka Sugata (Japan Post) - 31:49.20
8. Mikuni Yada (Edion) - 31:49.74
9. Risa Yamazaki (Nittai Univ.) - 31:50.13 - PB
10. Nanami Watanabe (Panasonic) - 31:50.59 - PB
11. Misaki Hayashida (Kyudenko) - 31:50.91 - PB
12. Tomo Muramatsu (Ritsumeikan Univ.) - 31:51.78 - PB
13. Kaede Kawamura (Iwatani Sangyo) - 31:54.73 - PB
14. Yumi Yoshikawa (Uniqlo) - 31:58.65 - PB
15. Wakana Itsuki (Kyudenko) - 32:23.77
16. Natsuki Omori (Daihatsu) - 32:26.41
17. Kazuna Kanetomo (Kyocera) - 32:27.84 - PB
18. Madoka Nakano (Iwatani Sangyo) - 32:55.26
19. Hina Yanagitani (Wacoal) - 32:56.81
20. Tomoka Kimura (Sekisui Kagaku) - 32:58.23
21. Chikako Mori (Sekisui Kagaku) - 33:04.23
22. Minami Yamanouchi (Shimamura) - 33:26.00
23. Rio Einaga (Osaka Gakuin Univ.) - 33:41.96
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DNF (pace) - Judy Jepngetich (Shiseido)
Men
1. Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) - 27:09.80 - NR
OP - Kiprono Sitonik (Kurosaki Harima) - 27:12.27 - PB
2. Tomoki Ota (Toyota) - 27:12.53 - PB (all-time JPN #2)
3. Akira Aizawa (Asahi Kasei) - 27:13.04 - PB (all-time JPN #3)
4. Ren Tazawa (Toyota) - 27:22.31 - PB (all-time JPN #4)
5. Ayumu Kobayashi (NTT Nishi Nihon) - 27:28.13 - PB (all-time JPN #7)
6. Ayumu Okawa (Press Kogyo) - 27:45.55 - PB
7. Takashi Nanba (Toenec) - 27:46.66 - PB
8. Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) - 27:46.99
9. Shunya Kikuchi (Chugoku Denryoku) - 27:47.76 - PB
10. Kanta Shimizu (Subaru) - 27:50.32
11. Naoki Ota (Yakult) - 27:52.10 - PB
12. Takashi Ichida (Asahi Kasei) - 27:57.08
13. Yohei Ikeda (Kao) - 28:09.76
14. Minato Oishi (Toyota) - 28:10.50
15. Yuto Imae (GMO) - 28:14.07
16. Tatsuhiko Ito (Honda) - 28:32.85
17. Tatsuya Oike (Toyota Boshoku) - 28:34.07
18. Hazuma Hattori (NTT Nishi Nihon) - 28:34.55
19. Daiki Hattori (Toyota Boshoku) - 28:38.22
20. Kyuma Yokota (Toyota Kyushu) - 28:38.27
21. Shingo Moriyama (YKK) - 28:43.88
22. Takuya Kitasaki (NTT Nishi Nihon) - 28:51.79
23. Sodai Shimizu (Otsuka Seiyaku) - 29:26.86
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DNF - Aritaka Kajiwara (Comodi Iida)
text and photos © 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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