4 meet records fell on the second day of the 2025 National Sports Festival in Shiga. In the junior men's pole vault, Naoya Inoue (Anan Hikari H.S.) was the only one to go higher than 4.80 m, and massively so. Inoue cleared 5.32 m on his 3rd attempt, setting a new MR and beating his closest competition by 52 cm.
800 m NR holders Rin Kubo (Higashi Osaka Keiai H.S.) and Ko Ochiai (Komazawa Univ.) duly took the 800 m wins here in MR time. Kubo won the junior women's race by over 3 seconds in 2:01.72, with Ochiai winning the senior men's race in 1:45.20. The men's race was actually decently competitive, with Mikuto Kaneko (Arcyell) and Hiroki Minamoto (NTN) going 1:46.25 and 1:46.47, and the top 4 all going under the old MR. Ochiai's success while still a teenager seems to be motivating other Japanese men in what is probably Japan's weakest track event.
The other meet record came in the junior men's 100 m B-final, where Sekito Matsushita (Shizuoka H.S.) ran 10.35 (+0.8) for the win. More to come in the A-finals, with both Kai Sugano (Tokyo Nogyo Daini H.S.) and Sorato Shimizu (Seiryo H.S.) ran faster than Matsushita in the semifinals.
In other results on Day 2:
- Issa Matsumoto (Morimura Gakuen H.S.) took the junior men's javelin throw in 63.49 m on his 2nd attempt.
- Koki Hasebe (Gifu Shogyo H.S.) won the junior men's long jump by 5 cm in 7.19 m (+1.5) on his 5th attempt.
- Ai Oyama (SDF Academy) won the senior women's 10000 m race walk in 44:59.44, almost a minute up on the chase pack.
- Haruka Osako (Somayq) threw 15.36 m on her 2nd attempt, in the end enough to win the senior women's shot put by 50 cm but fouling on her last 3 attempts.
- The junior men's triple jump went to Satoshi Inoue (Tamano Konan H.S.) with a 15.63 m (+1.4) on his 5th attempt, enough to overtake longtime leader Fukutaro Isoyama (Nishinomiya Higashi H.S.). Isoyama came back with his biggest jump in the final round but couldn't retake the top spot, ending up 2nd at 15.52 m (+0.5).
- Yuzuki Yokoyama (Shiritsu Kashiwa H.S.) had an easy win in the junior women's 100 m B-final, running 11.69 (+0.3) to finish 0.21 up on Aoi Hashimoto (Kanazawa Izumigaoka H.S.).
- Keeping on with what's already a long season, Tokyo World Championships team member Yuta Sakiyama (Ehime T&F Assoc.) won the senior men's javelin throw with a last attempt of 80.43 m that made him the only man over 80 m.
- The 300 m was on the menu across all age groups. Haru Barogun (Ichikawa H.S.) took the junior women's race in 38.16, Worlds team member Nanako Matsumoto (Toho Ginko) the senior women's race in 37.10, Kenji Tojima (Shiritsu Funabashi H.S.) the junior men's race in 32.76, and Kenki Imaizumi (Uchida Yoko AC) the senior men's race in 32.61.
The National Sports Festival continues through Tuesday.
© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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