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Chien Breaks TPE NR, Iwata Betters ID-Class WR - Weekend Track Roundup


The last weekend of the academic and fiscal year saw at least 5 meets with good results domestically and abroad. Kicking things off Friday was the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne, where Tomohiro Shinno and Naoto Hasegawa took 1st and 3rd in the men's high jump, both of them only clearing 2.18 m along with 2nd-placer Roman Anastasios. 12 other Japanese athletes were in action on the second day of the meet on Saturday, where 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura ran 3:42.84 for 6th in the men's 1500 m. Nagiya Mori had a better one in the men's 3000 m with a 7:45.40 for 4th. Both Yota Mashiko and Rui Suzuki cleared 8:00 too, Mashiko's 7:53.84 the 2nd-fastest ever by a Japanese-born high schooler. Abigail Fuka Ido and Nagisa Takahashi both placed 3rd in their events, Ido going 23.85 (-0.9) in the women's 200 m and Takahashi clearing 1.82 m in the women's high jump.


8 Japanese men were at The TEN in California to run 10000 m. In the B-heat won by Edward Marks in 27:54.98, Jinichiro Kameda was the fastest of the 3 Japanese men in the race, taking 8th in 28:38.21 with Ren Umezaki 9th in 28:40.28 and Yuma Shimo 13th in 28:54.45. The A-heat didn't go much better. Ayumu Yamamoto, Kotaro Shinohara, Kaisei Okada, Shoya Kawase and Ryuto Igawa had all run between 27:35 and 27:51, 3 of them under 27:40, but in a race where the top 2 broke 27 minutes, 9 went under 27:30 and 12 under 28 minutes, the Japanese group took 18th through 22nd of 24 finishers. Yamamoto had the fastest time at 28:29.05, the next 3 all coming in within 7 seconds of him and Igawa another 10 seconds back in 28:46.85. It wasn't exactly the most effective use of resources.


At the last Nittai University Time Trials of the school year, 800 m NR holder Ko Ochiai wrapped his 1st year at Komazawa University with a 3:38.60 PB to win the men's 1500 m fast heat., but the bigger news was in 4th place. Tzu-Chieh Chien ran his last race in the Sendai Ikuei H.S. uniform, dropping a 3:41.88 Taiwanese NR that also bettered the Miyagi prefecture high school 1500 m record. Picking things up the next day, Juntendo University's Haruka Yamamoto won the men's 3000 m B-heat in 7:56.06 to lead the top 4 under 8 minutes. His Juntendo teammate Hiroto Yoshioka was the only one to break 8 in the A-heat, running a 7:54.88 PB for the win.

Yuma Nishizawa delivered one other sub-8 3000 m, winning at the Tokyo Boshoku Time Trials meet in Aichi in 7:59.91. His teammate Takuya Hanyu had a good double, running 8:02.69 for 4th in Heat 1 behind Nishizawa, then coming back 5 minutes later to pace Heat 2 and cross the finish line 1st in 8:25.27. Further back in Heat 1, Paralympian Yuki Iwata took just under a second off his own ID-class world record, finishing 13th in 8:19.89.

At the Nihon University Time Trials meet, Yuki Hashioka opened his season with a solid 8.14 m (+1.2) for the win. Other decent performances included a 78.24 win by Yuta Sakiyama in the men's javelin throw and a 5.50 m clearance in the men's pole vault by Tomoya Karasawa.

© 2026 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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Anonymous said…
What went wrong for the boys during the 10? Why does it seem that the Japanese struggle so much outside of Japan?
April 1, 2026 at 2:24 AM
Brett Larner said…
It's a good question about this race, especially given the good results at the Maurie Plant Meet and Berlin Half the same weekend. One of the JPN runners in the fast race at the Ten texted me later and said it was "really humid," but given all the other great performances it's hard to see how that could only have affected the JPN athletes, especially as they are from different coaching groups and environments.
April 1, 2026 at 10:25 AM
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