Kitaguchi Gold, Akasaki and Suzuki 6th in Marathons - Paris Olympics Day 9-11 Japanese Results

We've been busy the last few days working with the Mongolian marathon team at the Paris Olympics. Catching up on the Japanese national team's performances over the last 3 days of athletics competition, the big news was of course world champion Haruka Kitaguchi scoring Japan's first and only medal in Paris, gold in the javelin on her first throw. In the final evening session on Saturday Kitaguchi came out swinging with a season best 65.80 m first throw that left the rest of the field fighting for silver. South African Jo-Ane Van Dyk came closest to Kitaguchi's mark at 63.93 m, just holding off Czech Nikola Ogrodnikova for silver by 25 cm. Japan's other javelin finalist Momone Ueda was 10th with a season best 61.64 m throw.

Kitaguchi's gold was the first-ever for a female Japanese athlete in the javelin throw and the first by any Japanese athlete since Mizuki Noguchi in the Athens Olympics marathon. Kitaguchi was seriously burned by the JAAF's massive 90% reduction in bonuses paid for medals this year, but it's pretty safe to say that with this she's set for life.

One of Japan's other medal hopes, the men's 4x100 m team of Ryuichiro Sakai, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, Yoshihide Kiryu and Koki Ueyama ran a season best 37.78, but that was only good enough for 5th. Sakai was a swap for Hiroki Yanagita who wasn't in peak form in the heats, and Sani Brown was switched to 2nd after leading his opening leg in the heats. But after disappointment at the Tokyo Olympics this was only 0.17 out of bronze, a step back in the right direction.

More unexpectedly, Ryoichi Akamatsu cleared a PB 2.31 m in the men's high jump to take 5th, the best Japanese men's high jump performance at the Olympics in 88 years. Bronze took 2.34 m, just out of range, but you can't fault a PB in an Olympic final.

The men's 4x400 m relay team of Yuki Joseph Nakajima, Kaito Kawabata, Fuga Sato and Kentaro Sato ran a 2:59.48 NR in their qualifying heat on Friday, but that only got them through to the final on a time qualifier when they finished 4th in their heat. It was pretty obvious Saturday's final was going to be big across the board, and it didn't disappoint. In a race where the top 6 of the 9 teams ran Olympic, area or national records, Japan ran an Asian record of 2:58.33 but only took 6th nearly 4 seconds behind the U.S.A. team. It was incredible to see live.

The women's 10000 m final on Friday saw women-only half marathon NR holder Rino Goshima take the lead, unintentionally in this case when Eritrean Rahel Daniel suddenly dropped out. In a race where the top 11 ran under 31 minutes Goshima ended up 18th in 31:29.48, Haruka Kokai coming through next in 31:44.03 for 19th and Yuka Takashima 22nd of 23 finishers in 31:52.07.

Women's 100 mH NR holder Mako Fukube and Yumi Tanaka both made the semifinals but came up short of qualifying for the final. Fukube was 5th in SF3 in 12.89 (-0.7) and Tanaka 12.91 (+0.5) for 7th in Heat 1 after making it through the repechage round.

Which brings us to the marathons. With both the men's race on Saturday and the women's race on Sunday bringing new Olympic records, big negative splits and a lot of PBs, Japan had its best overall team performance in a long, long time. JRN's dark horse pick to make the Paris team at last fall's Olympic trials even though he'd never broken 2:09, Akira Akasaki went right up in it after the flattish first 15 km, putting himself into the top 10 on the first climb and moving up into the top 5 where he stayed the rest of the way.

When the lead pack broke up with Tamirat Tola's move in the hills Akasaki was part of the quartet that came back together to race for silver, but in the last 5 km he dropped out of medal contention. 5th place looked like where he was going to end up, maybe 4th, but although he closed to within 1 second of Deresa Geleta both of them were run down by Emile Cairess in the final meters. Tola broke Samuel Wanjiru's Olympic record with a 2:06:26 for gold, Belgian Bashir Abdi taking silver in 2:06:47 and Benson Kipruto bronze in 2:07:00. Cairess' closing speed took him to 4th in 2:07:29, Geleta 5th in 2:07:31 and Akasaki 6th in 2:07:32, his first time breaking 2:09 and the fastest-ever by a Japanese man at the Olympics.

5000 m NR holder Suguru Osako was never really a factor, hanging near the back of the lead group without exerting himself and then dropping off to 13th in 2:09:25. Olympic trials winner Naoki Koyama ran as the leading Japanese man through the first 15 km before fading to 23rd in 2:10:33, but along with Osako they were still two of the fastest-ever Japanese men's Olympic performances.

Temperatures were hotter for the women's marathon on Sunday, but Japan's medal hopes there went on ice when the JAAF announced right after the men's marathon that women's NR holder Honami Maeda was out with a stress fracture in her right thigh. Maeda was the complete package, 2:18:59 with a shockingly aggressive 2nd half, proven on hills, proven in heat, etc. It fell to Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki ;and sub-2:21 runner Mao Ichiyama to pick up the slack.

Ichiyama was never in the top 35 and fell as far as 61st at 25 km before rallying a bit on the downhills and flatter last 10 km, ultimately finishing 51st in 2:34:13. In heavy rain Suzuki had run a 2:24:09 PB to win the Olympic trials, and here she ran the same kind of race, staying near the front but not really pushing until it counted. On the tough down-up-down section between 25 and 30 km she went into the top 10, and when things got real on the big downhill right after that it was top 5, just like Akasaki. She hung on as long as she could, but when Sifan Hassan passed her to hammer the leaders for gold she dropped to 6th.

In an incredible sprint finish Hassan broke Tiki Gelana's Olympic record with a 2:22:55 for the win over silver medalist Tigst Assefa by 3 seconds despite things getting physical between them on the winding section right before the home straight. Hellen Obiri was 3rd in a PB of 2:23:10 just 4 seconds ahead of 4th-placer Sharon Lokedi. Like Akasaki, Suzuki missed 5th by seconds, Amane Beriso Shankule getting there first in 2:23:57 and Suzuki next in 2:24:02, a PB in the biggest of races, the 2nd-fastest Japanese women's Olympic marathon time behind Naoko Takahashi's gold in Sydney 2000 and best placing since Noguchi's 2004 gold. It's strange that there are so many parallels between how Suzuki and Akasaki ran, both up in contention when it counted, both negative splitting their way to PBs, and both just missing out on 5th. Good on them. As 1985 Berlin Marathon winner Jimmy Ashworth told JRN post-race, "You can't ask for more than that."

Kitaguchi's javelin gold was Japan's only medal in athletics and road racing, a thin haul in an Olympics that saw the Japanese national team as a whole score its best-ever gold medal count across all sports, 20, and finish 3rd in the medal standings. Kitaguchi aside, Japan had three 5th-placers, three 6th-placers, one 7th and three 8th. That's not nothing, but it's still not up to Japan's level in a lot of other sports. The marathons were good this time around, but race walking and the 4x100 m were down in strength and middle distance remains a blank. Maybe the best of the next generation, Rin Kubo, Ko Ochiai, Keita Sato and a few others, will do something about that by the time Los Angeles rolls around in four years. We'll get a look at that in Tokyo next year.

text and photo © 2024 Brett Larner, all rights reserved