Day 7 of the Tokyo World Athletics Championships was the lightest yet for the home team with only 4 athletes in competition, but it provided the biggest disappointment for Japanese fans.
In the women's javelin throw, defending world and Olympic champion Haruka Kitaguchi, working her way back from an injury, was eliminated in the qualification round after throwing only 60.38 m on her 2nd attempt. That put her at 8th in group A behind even teammate Momone Ueda's 60.49 m 2nd attempt, and with the top 6 in group B all clearing 61 m both Kitaguchi and Ueda were out. The third Japanese woman on the squad, Sae Takemoto threw 55.11 m for 15th in group B and likewise did not move on. It's notable that Kitaguchi's training partner Petra Sicakova was also way off her best form with a 51.90 m best throw for 18th in group B.
The only other Japanese athlete competing was Nagiya Mori in the men's 5000 m Heat 1. Mori ran 13:29.44 for 15th, well off the top 8 placing he needed to make the final. But he actually ran a better race than the result would suggest, staying back out of trouble in the early going, starting to move up through the field in response to Sweden's Andreas Almgren taking over around 3000 m, and going from 19th to 11th by 3600 m. He hung there in range of top 8 waiting for the last move, at one point looking to have gotten spiked by Switzerland's Dominic Lobalu but shaking it off and regaining contact. But after 4300 m he started losing touch, fading back to his final placing of 15th. 8th-placer Etienne Daguinos' 13:14.87 was a fraction better than Mori's 13:15.07 PB from May and might have been out of range even with a perfect run, but it was a bit of a shame to see him unable to hold together what was otherwise a tactically well-executed run.
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