japan running news

One of the few events to survive the wave of race cancelations currently sweeping Japan as the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads, the National Cross-Country Championships took place Feb. 22 in Fukuoka. The senior men's 10 km was almost a replay of last year's race, with Hakone Ekiden uphill Fifth Stage star Yuhei Urano (Koku Gakuin Univ.) replacing Yuta Bando (Hosei Univ.) in the leading role of outrunning brothers Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) for the national title. Despite windy conditions times were quicker than in recent years, with Urano winning in 29:18 by 6 seconds over Kazuki Tamura and Yusuke Tamura another 10 seconds back. In the senior women's 8 km, last year's 5th-place and 2018 national 3000 m steeplechase champion Yukari Ishizawa (Edion) came back from a mid-race dropoff to outrun a group of women more than a decade younger for the win in 26:57, beating 20-year-old Yuna Wada (Meijo Univ.) by 1 second and 19-yea...

After a slow start that saw it playing catchup for the first half of the 35th anniversary East Japan Women's Ekiden  in Fukushima today, the Chiba prefecture team came on strong late in the race with three straight stage wins to put anchor Rika Kaseda safely 2:45 out front with 10 km to go. A smaller version of January's National Women's Ekiden, East Japan features 18 teams made up from the best junior high school, high school, university, club, corporate and pro runners from each prefecture in the region. With their home battered by typhoons this fall the Chiba team hoped to pull of a win to give some inspiration to the people back home. Mai Shinozuka , Chika Kosakai and Rika Minami played a big role on the 6th through 8th stages, giving Kaseda, the silver medalist in the half marathon at this year's World University Games, the margin she needed to have a chance against Tokyo's Hitomi Niiya . Last year, in her first road race back from a five-year retirem...

The almost always reliable junior women scored Japan's only medal of the 2019 World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, beating Uganda by one point to make the podium. Uganda's Sarah Chelangat was part of the mad sprint finish for the individual medals, coming up just short at 4th but giving Uganda an edge for bronze behind Ethiopia and Kenya. It took solid pair runs from Japan's Ayuka Kazama and Ririka Hironaka , 14th and 15th ahead of Uganda's second runner Esther Chekwemoi , and Chika Kosakai and Hazuki Doi , 21st and 22nd just seconds ahead of Uganda's last two scorers, to make it happen. The bronze medal placing was the junior women's 16th in World Cross Country Championships history. Kazama's 14th-place finish as the first runner not from Ethiopia, Kenya or Uganda was also the best individual placing of the day by a Japanese athlete, as it turned out. But Issei Sato 's 20th-place finish in the U20 men's 8 km was al...

Following last Saturday's National Cross Country Championships , the JAAF has announced the rosters for next month's World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark. The always-strong U20 Women's squad and sometimes-strong U20 Men's squad are solid, each featuring the top six from its race at Nationals led by junior national champions Ririka Hironaka (Nagasaki Shogyo H.S.) and Jun Kasai (Kansai Soka H.S.). The Senior Men's team is one of the better in recent years, with only Nationals 2nd-placer Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) and 6th-placer Shota Onizuka (Tokai Univ.) giving the team a miss. In their places will run 7th-place Kosei Yamaguchi (Asian Kogyo), a steeplechase specialist, and Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota), the fastest man on the team with a track 10000 m PB of 28:29.23. But the Senior Women's lineup is thin. Six of the top eight placers at Nationals were already on the Japanese national team for April's Doha Asian Championships , a...