Early July Track Roundup

There's already been a lot going on on the track since the start of July, so let's get to it.

The women's 100 mH was the main event at the July 5 Fuse Sprint meet in Tottori, with Hitomi Nakajima turning in the 3rd-fastest time of her career, 12.75 (-0.4), for the win, a time only one other Japanese woman has ever beaten. Yumi Tanaka and Masumi Aoki both turned in quality performances too at 12.89 and 12.97 for 2nd and 3rd. All-time Japanese #4 Midori Mikase had a good one in the women's 100 m too, winning in 11.36 (+0.7).

The Hokuren Distance Challenge series kicked off July 4 in Chitose. Tuning up for her 1500-5000-10000 triple at September's Nagoya Asian Games, Nozomi Tanaka won the 1500 m in 4:08.53, then came back to win the 5000 m in a 15:00.61 season best. Bigger news was 3000 mSC NR holder Miu Saito in 2nd, running a PB 15:02.68 to come in at all-time Japanese #8. Collegiate record holder Richard Etir led the men's 5000 m in a 13:08.44 SB, with Waseda University's Shunpei Yamaguchi running 13:17.19 for 4th, the 4th-fastest ever by a Japanese-born collegiate runner and overall all-time collegiate #9.

Held in conjunction with the Chitose meet, the National Corporate Championships 10000 m men's title went to Shota Nakano in 28:17.07, Momoka Kawaguchi taking the women's title in 32:14.00.

The 2nd stop in the HDC series was July 8 in Abashiri. Janet Jepkoech had the best individual performance of the meet, winning the women's 5000 m by 40 seconds in 14:52.74. On the men's side, Tokai University had a great team result with Junpei Nakano, Yuta Minamisaka and Shu Nagamoto all breaking 13:40 for 5000 m across 3 different heats. In Heat 2, Miyazaki Nichidai H.S. student Yuta Fujii ran an 11-second PB of 13:47.07 for 3rd. In the women's 10000 m Deborah Chemutai ran a 31:39.52 PB for the win, leading Rika Kaseda and 5000 m national champion Yuma Yamamoto under 31:45. Emmanuel Maru won the men's 10000 m in 27:35.59, with Koku Gakuin University's Hiromichi Nonaka 2nd in 27:41.33, Chuo University's Yuto Miyake 3rd in a 27-second PB 27:44.45, and KGU's Itsuki Takaishi getting under 28 for the first time in 27:57.71 for 4th.

A lot of people are racing the Europe and the U.S. right now too. Highlights:

Japan's first runner sub-10, Yoshihide Kiryu ran a heavily wind-aided 9.99 (+4.1) for 4th at the Raiffeisen Austrian Open Eisenstadt meet on July 1.
Yuki Hashioka jumped 7.97 m (+1.4) for 5th in the men's long jump at the July 3 Meeting Stanislas Nancy in France.
Also July 3, men's 2-mile Asian record holder Keita Sato stepped up from his focus on the 1500 m to run the 2-mile at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meet. Ranked last, he finished 18th of 19 in 8:27.79.
At the July 4 Meeting Maia Cidade do Desporto in Portugal, Koki Fujihara was 6th in the men's long jump at 7.46 m (0.0).
The July 4 Meeting National Est Lyonnais in France had Waseda's Soma Nagahara in the 3000 mSC, where he was last in 8:30.30 in his European debut. Yuki Murao was 14th in the B-heat in 8:48.72.
Better luck for Toyo University's 2026 men's triple jump national champ Manato Miyao, who took 3rd in 16.19 (+1.1) at the Meeting International Bouvet-Bionda despite a canceled flight that saw him arrive a day late just a few hours before the start of the meet.
A member of Japan's mixed 4x400 m relay team at last fall's Tokyo World Championships, Takuho Yoshizu made his European debut with a 46.42 for 5th at the Meeting voor Mon Polsstokgala in Belgium on July 4, then improved on that with a 46.38 for 2nd at the Joensuu Motonet GP meet in Finland on the 8th. Men's javelin throw national champ Yuta Sakiyama was in Joensuu too, turning in his weakest performance of the season with a throw of 76.17 m for 5th.
Women's high jump national champion Nagisa Takahashi was at the July 5 Opolski Festival Skokow in Poland, finishing only 11th with a 1.80 m clearance.
At the Folksam Grand Prix Karlstad meet in Sweden on the 8th, Shunta Inoue was 5th in the men's 400 mH in 50.06. Men's high jump NR holder Naoto Tobe cleared 2.05 m to take 5th as well.

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...

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