Fukuoka, Hofu, Valencia and More - Weekend Preview and Streaming

It's another massive weekend of racing in Japan before championship ekiden season really hits. Proving that it's always time for track time trials, Saturday's Edion Distance Challenge meet in Osaka has high-level women's 3000 m, 5000 m and 10000 m races on the menu. 5000 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka will take her annual stab at the 10000 m against Dolphine Omare, Tabitha Njeri Kamau, Pauline Kamulu and more, with domestic competition including Queens Ekiden First Stage winner Kana Mizumoto. Anchor stage winner Rina Sasaki leads the 5000 m A-heat with support from Lucy Nduta. Streaming starts at 12:05 p.m. local time. Complete meet schedule and entry lists here.

Sunday is the 50th running of the world's #1 10-miler, the Kumamoto Kosa Road Race. This is really the last big tuneup for the New Year Ekiden and Hakone Ekiden, and every year it's fast up front with the kind of depth of quality you see in the bigger half marathon and marathons. There are too many people to list everyone good, but top names include Vincent Yegon, Benard Langat, Evans Keitany, Tatsuhiko Ito, Naoki Koyama, Ichitaka Yamashita and Nagiya Mori. There are also high-level women's 5 km and high school boys' 10 km races, with 2026 World XC team member Yuzu Nishide leading the women's field. Streaming starts at 10:10 a.m.

But Sunday is really about marathons. Just south of Tokyo is the almost 20,000-runner Shonan International Marathon, not a race with an elite field but one of Japan's biggest and the Paris Marathon's inspiration for its shift to more ecological-friendly drink stations. Squaring off head-to-head for reasons that are complicated are the Fukuoka International Marathon and Hofu Yomiuri Marathon. Fukuoka is traditionally the higher-level race, but at this point it's almost even. Both races have a World Athletics elite label, Fukuoka having downgraded from gold, and both count equally in qualification for the MGC Race 2027 Olympic marathon trials with qualifying spots for the first 6 Japanese men as long as they're under 2:09:00. Hofu also has a spot for the top Japanese woman if she's under 2:27:00, so in one way at least there's an argument to be made that Hofu is a step ahead.

Sub-2:10 Japanese men in Fukuoka:

Kyohei Hosoya - 2:05:58 (Osaka 2025)

Shunya Kikuchi - 2:06:06 (Osaka 2025)

Yusuke Nishiyama - 2:06:31 (Tokyo 2024)

Tatsuya Maruyama - 2:07:06 (Tokyo 2025)

Tetsuya Yoroizaka - 2:08:34 (Shanghai 2024)

Takumi Iwata - 2:09:28 (Osaka 2025)

And in Hofu:

Kazuya Nishiyama - 2:06:45 (Osaka 2023)

Daisuke Doi - 2:06:54 (Osaka 2024)

Yuta Koyama - 2:07:57 (Osaka 2023)

Daiji Kawai - 2:08:32 (Osaka 2023)

Yuki Kawauchi - 2:08:32 (Hofu 2023)

Ryoma Takeuchi - 2:08:38 (Gold Coast 2025)

Masatoshi Sakata - 2:09:08 (Osaka 2025)

Hidekazu Hijikata - 2:09:10 (Osaka 2024)

Masashi Nonaka - 2:09:11 (Osaka 2024)

Takayuki Iida - 2:09:34 (Prague 2023)

Kazuki Muramoto - 2:09:41 (Beppu-Oita 2023)

So Fukuoka has a bit higher-level and fresher people, with more candidates in Hofu but only one, Ryoma Takeuchi, at his peak. Internationals in Hofu are limited to Japan-based Africans Derese Workneh, Bedan Karoki and Patrick Mathenge, with Djibouti's Ibrahim Hassan leading 5 internationals actually coming to Fukuoka from abroad plus another 2 Japan-based Kenyans including 2-time winner Michael Githae.

Mizuki Nishimura set a 1:41:42 CR at February's Kumanichi 30 km and is debuting in Hofu, the only real candidate to hit the 2:27:00 Olympic trials standard. If you've got a Japanese VPN you can probably pick up the official broadcasts on TVer and Hulu, Hofu starting at 10:40 a.m. and Fukuoka at 12:10 p.m. Hofu's leaderboard will be here, with live results from Fukuoka here.

And wrapping the day is 5000 m NR holder Suguru Osako, fresh off debuting his new tattoo on social media ahead of the Valencia Marathon. The JAAF doesn't care about placing or competitive ability when it comes to international races, saying only that if Japanese athletes run abroad and want to qualify for the Olympic trials they have to do it in a World Athletics platinum label race and run 2:06:30 or better for men, 2:23:30 or better for women. So, it's 2:06:30 or nothing for Osako, a time he last ran almost 3 years ago at the 2023 Tokyo Marathon. He's run 61 minutes in both of his half marathons this year, not that far off his best, so it wouldn't be a big surprise to see him pull it off.

Federation Tells World Championships Marathoner Horibata To Go On Diet

http://hochi.yomiuri.co.jp/sports/etc/news/20110307-OHT1T00258.htm translated by Brett Larner Having made the 2011 World Championships marathon team by running a PB of 2:09:25 to come in 3rd overall and as the top Japanese finisher at the Mar. 6 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon, Hiroyuki Horibata (24, Team Asahi Kasei), talked to the media at Osaka Airport on Mar. 7. Following Sunday's race Rikuren director Keisuke Sawaki , 67, told Horibata, "Let's cut things down a bit until the World Championships," directing him to go on a diet. The 189 cm Horibata weighs 72 kg [~6'3", 160 lbs]. When he joined Team Asahi Kasei in 2005 at age 18 he weighed 65 kg, and this weight is still generally listed on his profile at races and in the media. "For some reason it never changes," he said with a grin. His coach Takeshi Soh , 58, commented, "If he was hungrier for glory his world would change completely," slapping the 'heavyweight division runner...

Restaurant Owner Selected as Olympic Torchbearer Dies in Fire After Becoming Despondent Over Impact of Coronavirus Crisis (updated)

On the evening of Apr. 30, the 54-year-old male owner of a restaurant in Tokyo's Nerima ward specializing in tonkatsu deep fried pork cutlets died from full-body burns in a fire at the restaurant. The man had been one of the people chosen as a torchbearer for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics torch relay. With the coronavirus crisis causing both the postponement of the Olympics and a loss of business at the restaurant, the man had recently started talking pessimistically about the future to those around him. With evidence of the man's body having been doused in tonkatsu cooking oil, metropolitan police from the Hikarigaoka Police Station are carefully examining the cause of the fire. At around 10:00 p.m. on the 30th, the fire broke out in the tonkatsu restaurant on the first floor of a three-story building. A neighborhood resident who noticed smoke called the fire department. Firefighters found the floor and part of a wall burning, with the man lying on the floor in the customer seat...

Kawauchi Wins Inaugural Kawauchi Half Marathon

http://www.minyu-net.com/sports/running/FM20160501-070419.php translated by Brett Larner 川内優輝ロード pic.twitter.com/rEJk7CQPFV — みとっぽ (黒) (@mitoppo_tmyk) April 30, 2016 Yuki Kawauchi Road in Kawauchi, Fukushima Held to inspire former residents to return to the area after the nearby TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident five years ago, the village of Kawauchi held the first " Kawauchi no Sato Kaeru Half Marathon - From Reconstruction to Creation " on April 30. The course started and finished at the village heliport. 1188 runners from across the country gathered to celebrate the village's revival as they ran through its springtime streets. The event's organizing committee was made up of local government and board of education members with support from the Fukushima Minyu Newspaper and other sponsors. The race's purpose was to transmit the vitality and charm of the reconstructing Kawauchi village to the rest of the nation in hopes of helpin...

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