16 Women and 26 Men on the Current Olympic Trials Qualifier List

Last weekend's Nagoya Women's Marathon and the Tokyo Marathon the weekend before brought the main part of the first year of qualification for the Marathon Grand Championship Race, Japan's L.A. Olympics marathon trials to be held in Nagoya in October, 2027, to an end. There are still a few races like the Nagano Marathon and overseas World Athletics platinum label races this season where people might qualify, but for the most part we're not likely to see many new additions until August's Hokkaido Marathon, where the qualifying period opened last year. As of right now 16 women and 26 men have qualified, although the first woman to make the cut, Ai Hosoda, announced that she was retiring after Tokyo earlier this month.

Out of the 16 women to have qualified so far, Mikuni Yada is the fastest with her 2:19:57 debut at Osaka Women's in January. Including Hosoda that makes 2 qualifiers for the Edion corporate team, but Daihatsu has the biggest share of the field so far at 3 qualifiers, Rika Kaseda and Natsuki Omori in Nagoya and Mizuki Matsuda at Osaka Women's. It's a great achievement for head coach Miwako Yamanaka, one of the few female head coaches in the industry in Japan.

Mitsubishi Juko also has 3 qualifiers on the men's list, Ichitaka Yamashita getting there in Osaka, Ryota Kondo in Tokyo, and Hiroto Inoue at Beppu-Oita. But 3 independent runners not belonging to corporate teams are on the list too, the 2 fastest Suguru Osako and Kengo Suzuki and the slowest, Yudai Fukuda. Sora Shinozakura on the women's list is also an independent athlete, bringing the total to 4 out of 42 overall.

The Otsuka Seiyaku team has 3 qualifiers total so far, Rie Kawauchi and Kana Kobayashi on the women's list and Daisuke Uekado on the men's, and there are also 3 collegiate runners on the men's list, Asahi Kuroda of Aoyama Gakuin University, Shinsaku Kudo of Waseda University, and Itta Tameike of Chuo University. Other teams with 2 qualifiers so far include Tokyo Metro, Kurosaki Harima, and Toyota.

Interestingly, and a bit entertainingly, former Takushoku University roommates and multiple Olympic and world championships teammates Kentaro Nakamoto and Arata Fujiwara, both have 2 people on the corporate teams they now coach, in the field, Nakamoto's Yasukawa Denki having the edge with Ryo Goda running 2:06:51 in Osaka and Kiyoshi Koga 2:07:46 in Beppu-Oita, and Fujiwara's Suzuki having Tomohiro Fujimura, 2:08:49 in Tokyo, and Takumi Oishi, 2:08:51 in Fukuoka.

We'll follow up with an updated list as things evolve.

text and photo © 2026 Brett Larner, all rights reserved