On Oct. 1 the Daiichi Seimei corporate team announced that executive advisor and special head coach Sachiko Yamashita had retired from the company at the end of October. Yamashita, 61, was born in 1964. After working as a teacher she joined the corporate leagues as an athlete, going on to take silver in the marathon at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships. A year later she was 4th in the Barcelona Olympics marathon.
Yamashita joined Daiichi Seimei as an athlete and coach n 1994, and after retiring from competition in 1996 became the team's head coach. As the team's coach she developed Olympians Yoshimi Ozaki, Tomomi Tanaka, Miyuki Uehara and Yuka Suzuki, and led the team to two Queens Ekiden national titles. In 2024 she stepped back from her leadership role to focus on coaching Suzuki.
"For 31 years I've had the opportunity to take on a wide range of challenges in this sport that I love so much, and that was thanks to the support of many people," she said in published comments. "I would like to sincerely thank everyone who helped me along the way. This experience has been one of the most valuable parts of my life. It was only thanks to all the wonderful athletes I was involved with that this was possible, and to all the team support staff, who I spent more time with than my own family. There's so much I don't know how to put into words. Times change, but I hope that the Daiichi Seimei team will continue to grow, assert its presence, and flourish. Good health and happiness to all of you."
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translated and edited by Brett Larner
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