Chien Breaks TPE NR, Iwata Betters ID-Class WR

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. 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.

Hayashi Morozumi Steps Down as Tokai Head Coach

Hayashi Morozumi , 59, has stepped down as head coach at Tokai University following its 12th-place finish at this year's 102nd Hakone Ekiden. Morozumi will serve in an executive advisory role to Noriaki Nishide , 51, who moves up from the Tokai coaching staff to take on head coach duties. Morozumi came to at his alma mater Tokai in 2011 after serving at head coach at Nagano's Saku Chosei H.S. , where the team won the 2008 National High School Ekiden anchored by future marathon NR holder Suguru Osako . In 2019 Morozumi led Tokai to its first-ever Hakone title, making him the only coach to win both the biggest high school and college titles in his career. When Morozumi became head coach at Saku Chosei in 1995 he personally drove a bulldozer to build a cross-country loop at the school, combining his innovative coaching theory with deep passion to build the Saku Chosei program from zero to national championships in just 13 years. Along with Osako, now 34, some of his key proteges ...

JAAF Announces Marathon Teams for Nagoya Asian Games

On Mar. 25 the JAAF announced Japan's marathon team lineups for this fall's Nagoya Asian Games. Yuya Yoshida (GMO) and Ichitaka Yamashita (Mitsubishi Juko) make up the men's team, with Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku) and Mikuni Yada (Edion) representing Japan in the women's marathon. Each country can field up to 2 men and 2 women per marathon team at the Asian Games. The top-ranked male and female athletes in the 2025-26 MGC Series rankings were given first priority, with the second slots going to people with high-level performances in the 2025-26 MGC Series. Yoshida ran 2:05:16 to win the 2024 Fukuoka International Marathon, and at February's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon ran an excellent 2:06:59 to take the top Japanese spot in the race and in the MGC rankings. After having run the Tokyo World Championships marathon last fall this will be his second-straight marathon national team in a major international championships. Yamashita ran 2:06:18 at February's Osak...

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

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