Japan didn't quite pull off a sweep of the men's and women's half marathon at the 2025 FISU World University Games, but it was pretty close. In the men's race Waseda University's Shinsaku Kudo, the fastest man in the race with a best of 1:00:06 from Marugame this past February, led start to finish, keeping it around 62-flat pace before finishing in a WUG record 1:02:29. Turkey's Ramazan Bastug spent most of the race in a small chase pack with Ryuto Uehara (Koku Gakuin Univ.) and Kento Baba (Rikkyo Univ.) before dropping them both for silver in 1:02:35. Uehara was just behind in 1:02:39 for bronze, with Baba missing out on the medals in 1:02:44 for 4th.
In the women's race China's Xiuzhen Ma had to deal with the Japanese trio of Makoto Tsuchiya (Ritsumeikan Univ.), Mariya Noda (Daito Bunka Univ.) and Ayaka Maeda (Kansai Univ.). And she did, running a PB 1:12:48 for gold over Tsuchiya by 10 seconds. Noda scored the bronze medal in 1:13:16, with Maeda, a replacement for Aoi Takahashi (Josai Univ.), 2 seconds behind in 4th. Both the women's and men's teams took the gold medals in team scoring.
The men's 5000 m final didn't have any Japanese athletes in it, but what a wild race. France's Arthur Gervais won gold in 15:02.00, in a men's 5000 m, with 0.47 separating the medalists, 0.93 separating the top 6, and 4.37 seconds separating the top 14. If you can find video of it watch it to see the crazy last lap. There were no Japanese women in the 5000 m final either, where Julia David-Smith made it a French double with a 15:34.57 PB for the win off a 60-second last lap. Daito Bunka University's Sarah Wanjiru was 10th in 15:46.26.
Aoi Murakami (Nittai Univ.) was 4th in the women's javelin throw final, throwing 56.28 m on her 3rd attempt and coming up only 45 cm short of bronze. Turkey's Esra Turkmen came up with a 59.90 m PB on her final attempt, moving up from bronze into gold. In the men's triple jump final Yuto Adachi (Fukuoka Univ.) jumped 16.16 m (+1.3) on his opening attempt, ultimately finishing 7th. Australian Conor Murphy took gold at 16.77 m (+1.2). Tetsu Sasaki (Waseda Univ.) was also 7th in the men's 3000 mSC final in 8:41.53, 6 and a half seconds out of the medals with Luxembourg's Ruben Querinjean running a WUG record 8:18.46 for gold.
In qualifying rounds, Raika Murakami (Kyushu Kyoritsu Univ.) made the women's hammer throw final with a 65.89 m throw that put her at 7th among the qualifiers. In the men's 800 m semifinals, both Sota Okamura (Kanoya Taiiku Univ.) and NR holder Ko Ochiai (Komazawa Univ.) missed the final, Okamura 3rd in SF2 in 1:48.67 and Ochiai a disastrous last in SF1 in 1:51.70 after leading the first lap in 52.83, only 21st out of the 24 competitors in the semis. It's too soon to call his decision to go to the long distance-specialty Komazawa a mistake, but with results like this you have to feel like at some point he's going to start questioning that decision.
The FISU World University Games wrap Sunday.
© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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