japan running news

Windier conditions throughout day three of the Doha Asian Athletics Championships made for a tougher day than the previous one, but there were still good performances across the board with one world-leading time, four that tied or bettered championships records, and three new national records.

The Chinese women led the way with a 42.87 in the 4x100 m relay, a new championships record and the fastest time in the world so far this year. In the absence of a Japanese team the Chinese men also took the 4x100, running it in 38.88 before being disqualified to elevate Thailand to gold. A new championships record also came in the women's 200 m, with Salwa Naser of Bahrain leading the qualifiers at 22.84 +0.6.

The other two championships record-breaking times came in the women's 10000 m. Reliving their duels at the 2012 London Olympics and 2013 Moscow World Championships, Japan's Hitomi Niiya led almost the entire way with Ethiopian-born Bahraini Shitaye Habtegebrel right on her he…

Japan has named a team featuring ten individual medalists from the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games to get an early taste of this year's World Championships  at April's Doha Asian Athletics Championships. Along with its gold medal-winning men's 4x100 m team, standouts include Jakarta gold medalists Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) in the men's 200 m, Seito Yamamoto (Toyota) in the men's pole vault and Keisuke Ushiro (Kokushin Univ. AC) in the decathlon.

The women's long distance roster is strong, led by 2018 World U20 Championships 3000 m gold medalist Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) in the 5000 m and the resurgent Hitomi Niiya (Nike Tokyo TC) in the 10000 m, while the most interesting name among the men is Jakarta 3000 m steeplechase bronze medalist Kazuya Shiojiri (Juntendo Univ.).
23rd Asian Athletics ChampionshipsJapanese National Team
Doha, Qatar, Apr. 21-24, 2019
complete team listing
underlined athletes are 2018 Asian Games medalists

Women
Sprints
Chisato Fukushima (Seiko) - 100…

Japan tripled its medal count on the second day of athletics competition at the Jakarta Asian Games, adding another gold, its first silver and two more bronze medals to its tally. The silver came in the morning session with Keiko Nogami's 2nd place finish in the women's marathon, previously covered here.

The gold and one bronze came in an exciting decathlon that saw defending champ Keisuke Ushiro and teammate Akihiko Nakamura in 2nd and tied for 3rd going into the 1500 m. Ushiro needed a 2-second margin over leader Suttisak Singkhon of Thailand to move into the gold medal position, which he did with ease. Tied with China's Kewei Gong, Nakamura needed as much of a margin as he could get over Gong to finish in the medals and 42 seconds over Singkhon to take silver. Nakamura went out hard, but although he had no trouble putting Gong away the margin he needed to make up to Singkhon was just too big.

The other bronze came via one of Japan's biggest hopes. With a best of 10…

Following up on its silver medal at the Rio Olympics, the Japanese men's 4x100 m relay squad delivered the first Japanese medal of the London World Championships as it took bronze behind hosts Great Britain and U.S.A. Swapping in alternate Kenji Fujimitsu for ailing anchor Aska Cambridge in the final, the team featured only two starting members of the Rio lineup. Lead runner Shuhei Tada, a student at Kwansei Gakuin University who burst onto the scene in May, again proved himself the best new development in Japanese men's sprinting with a fast start. Rio members Shota Iizuka and Yoshihide Kiryu did their bits on second and third to keep Japan even with Jamaica in 3rd before Fujimitsu delivered the goods.

With bronze at the Beijing Olympics and silver in Rio last year it was Japan's first-ever World Championships men's 4x100 m relay medal. At age Fujimitsu may not make it to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but with Cambridge, 200 m finalist Abdul Hakim Sani Brown and Rio team …

Finishing 4th in her opening round heat, national champion Ayako Kimura became the first Japanese woman to make a World Championships 100 m hurdles semifinal, running 13.15 to auto-qualify. In Semifinal 2 she was unable to match that performance, finishing last in 13.29. National Championships runner-up Hitomi Shimura ran 13.29 in her heat and did not move on to the semifinals.

In the men's 1500 m semifinals, Japan-based junior world record holder Ronald Kwemoi struggled with a recent injury and failed to advance to the final. Running in the same heat, American Johnny Gregorek, who ran last year's Izumo Ekiden as part of the Ivy League Select Team, moved up from last place over the last 300 m to snag the last spot in the final, the only U.S. man to make the 1500 m final.

In the men's high jump, national champion Takashi Eto cleared 2.22 m for 9th in his qualification group and did not advance. In the decathlon, at the end of the first day of competition Japan's Akihik…