japan running news

Sumire Hata moved up a level globally with a 6.97 m +0.5 m/s Japanese national record to win the women's long jump gold medal on day 3 of the Bangkok Asian Athletics Championships. Already in first with a 6.74 m +1.7 m/s jump in the 4th round, Hata closed with the 6.97 m jump, the 4th-furthest in the world so far this year, to increase her margin over silver medalist Shaili Singh of India to 0.43 m. Bronze medalist Jiawei Zhong was another 8 cm back at 6.46 m. Another big gold came in the men's 100 m, where Hiroki Yanagita followed up on his 10.10 PB in the first round with a dominating 10.02 +0.0 m/s for gold, winning by 0.17 and moving up to all-time Japanese #7. National champion Ryuichiro Sakai was 6th in 10.26. With many of the main names in Japanese men's spring struggling this season as they hit mid and late career phases, Yanagita's jump up in performance couldn't have come at a better time. Still another was in the men's 110 mH. Shunya Takayama was...

We'd like to give you preview and streaming info for the Asian Athletics Championships starting tomorrow in Bangkok, Thailand, but there's not a lot to go on. Streaming should be here under the "Live" tab , but as the JAAF site notes , "There's a chance a link to streaming might be released right before the start. If one is announced, we'll let you know." 42 countries are set to compete, but no overall entry lists have been made public anywhere we've looked. The Asian Athletics Association site isn't very helpful either, its top story being the federation bureaucrats' "Gala and Awards Celebration for the 50th Anniversary of Asian Athletics Association" and almost nothing about its championships apart from a statistics PDF that starts off with a long autobiography by an AAA exec. The meet schedule is up and it has links to event start lists, but nothing has been added there yet. So, about all we can tell you right now is about...

On Oct. 30 the JAAF announced a team of three men and three women for the Asian Athletics Association's 17th Asian Marathon Championships to be held Dec. 22 in Dongguan, China. Times listed are athletes' best performances in the last three years. Men Daichi Kamino (Cell Source) - 2:10:18 (Tokyo 2018) Ryoichi Matsuo (Asahi Kasei) - 2:13:26 (Nobeoka 2019) Koki Tanaka (Kanebo) - 2:13:36 (Hokkaido 2019) Women Mao Uesugi (Starts) - 2:28:02 (Nagoya 2019) Marie Imada (Iwatani Sangyo) - 2:29:35 (Saitama 2018) Mirai Waku (Universal Entertainment) - 2:33:37 (Nagoya 2019) © 2019 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Last week's Asian Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar were held at Khalifa International Stadium , the same place where this fall's World Championships will be held. These days I'm working with three members of the Japanese team at the Asian Championships and went along to help them out and to check out the stadium and surrounding area. The below was my personal experience throughout the four days of the AAC. Day One One of the athletes' dad / coach was there to watch her run, so I spent the first day with him. He'd bought a ticket online, near the 250 m point on the back corner, Row 2, Seat 35. I couldn't get the online ticket site to work, so I went to the ticket office at the stadium to buy Seat 36. The two friendly young women working at the ticket window seemed pleasantly surprised that someone had come to buy a ticket, although when I asked they said I wasn't the first one. Our tickets said Gate 20, but when we went there we found that al...

On a day that saw three more world-leading marks, three more championships records and nine more national records, Japan saved its best for the last day of the Doha Asian Athletics Championships , bringing home three gold medals, two silvers and four bronze. Yuki Hashioka brought the Japanese performance of the day, winning gold in the men's long jump with a world lead-tying PB jump of 8.22 m +0.6. Gold also came in the women's 100 m hurdles along with one of the bronzes, with Ayako Kimura and Masumi Aoki going 1 and 3. The other gold came in the show-stopping men's 4x400 m relay, where Japan led start-to-finish to win  by 0.34 over India. India was later disqualified, elevating China to silver and hosts Qatar to bronze. The Japanese women's 4x400 m team led their race for almost 3/4 of the way, overtaken by India just before the last exchange and caught by Bahrain on the back corner but holding on for a surprise bronze. Takashi Eto and favorite Naoto Tobe...

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 rig...

Despite sparse attendance, day two of the Doha Asian Athletics Championships saw three world-leading performances, five championships records, eight national records and Japan get onto the medal tally board in a real way after a relatively slow first day . Qatari Abderrahman Samba turned in the performance of the day with a world-leading 47.51 championships record in the men's 400 m hurdles that left Japan's Takatoshi Abe tumbling in the turbulence. World-leaders also came in the men's 800 m via Qatari's Abubaker Haydar Abdalla with a 1:44.33 and the men's javelin with a throw of 86.72 m by Chao-Tsun Cheng of Taiwan. After only winning a single bronze medal on the first day of the championships Japan got rolling with one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. National record holder Yoshihide Kiryu took the gold in the men's 100 m, running 10.10 +1.5. Teammate Ryota Yamagata was a DNS after winning his semifinal in a season best 10.18. Ayaka K...

The bronze medalist in the men's 3000 m steeplechase at last summer's Jakarta Asian Games, Kazuya Shiojiri turned in the only medal-winning performance on the opening day of the Asian Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar with another steeple bronze. Shiojiri spent most of the race comfortably in the silver medal position behind Kenyan-born eventual world-leading gold medalist John Koech (Bahrain), but on the last lap Avinash Sable (India) turned in an incredible kick to overtake Shiojiri in the home straight. Side-by-side with Sable over the last lap, Hossein Keyhani (Iran) kicked over a cone and ran a few strides inside the last corner but somehow escaped disqualification for 4th. Japan's Kosei Yamaguchi was 6th. In both the women's 5000 m and men's 10000 m the gold and silver went to African-born Bahraini athletes with Indian runners taking bronze. In the 5000 m, Japan's 2018 World U20 3000 m gold medalist Nozomi Tanaka relatively listlessly le...

The weekend's main action comes on the track, both at home and abroad. The main action comes at the Doha Asian Athletics Championships , a dry run for this fall's World Championships at the same new Khalifa Stadium where the athletics world will congregate in September. The Japanese national team is solid, with standouts including Jakarta gold medalists Yuki Koike in the men's 200 m, Seito Yamamoto in the men's pole vault and Keisuke Ushiro in the decathlon, men's 3000 m steeplechase bronze medalist Kazuya Shiojiri , 2018 World U20 Championships women's 3000 m gold medalist Nozomi Tanaka in the 5000 m and the resurgent Hitomi Niiya in the women's 10000 m. JRN will be on-site throughout the Asian Championships to cover the action live and in support of Tanaka and Niiya. Entry lists are available here . A few members of the Toyota Jidoshokki women's team and the U.S.-based Takeshi Okada (Berkeley) will be at California's Mt. SAC Relays , but ...