japan running news

This week after the wrap of the 2022 National Track and Field Championships the JAAF had a press conference to announce additions to the already-announced road event members of its team for next month's Oregon World Championships team. 18 men and 9 women are on the team for sure with a combination of having the Worlds standard and meeting JAAF criteria for placing at the National Championships, and with just under two weeks until the deadline for qualifying those numbers could go as high as 36 men and 24 women based on where people sit right now in their event quotas. Below is a list of events with Japanese athletes either already qualified or within their event quota. Right now there's potential that Japan could send full squads in the men's 110 mH, men's 400 mH, men's 3000 mSC, men's high jump, men's marathon, both men's race walks and both men's relays, and in the women's 5000 m, women's 10000 m, women's 3000 mSC, women's javelin t...

Japan's women's and men's 4x100 m relays were the only ones in action in the morning session on the seventh day of track and field competition at the Tokyo Olympics . The women's team performed up to ability, delivering a season best 43.44 to finish 7th in their heat and not advancing to the final. The men's 4x100 m team has faced more pressure in the lead-up to this Olympics than anybody except maybe Japan's marathoners, so much so that the official Japanese broadcaster has been airing ads for the men's 4x100 m final all throughout the last week and a half on the assumption that the Japanese men would be there.  They will be, but barely. Japan finished 3rd in the first heat in 38.16 to take an auto-qualifying spot by 0.02 over France. With the two time qualifying spots going to Germany and Ghana in the second heat in 36.06 and 36.08 it was closer than anyone would have liked to a major embarrassment, and with Japan the slowest of the eight qualifiers for t...

As of right now, five days into the Tokyo Olympic Games , Japan leads the medal standings with 13 gold, 4 silver and 5 bronze medals. Across sports Japanese athletes have been performing at the top level, showing both the benefits of increased investment in development over the last eight years since Japan won the 2020 Olympic bid and the home ground advantage. Track and field starts tomorrow, and while compared to some other sports it's one of Japan's weaker spots, it has a realistic shot at six medals with another eleven top 8 finishes in range. Your guide to who to watch for from the home team on the track, field and roads. Medal Chances Back when Japan first competed in the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912 it had exactly two athletes on its entire team, one marathoner and one sprinter. 109 years later not much has changed. Distance and sprints are still Japan's best chances of medaling, the race walks taking the place of the marathon, and the 4x100 m relay one of the most...

Following the success of the Marathon Grand Championship single-race Olympic marathon trials, in which the top finishers in the trials race earned spots on the Olympic team, the JAAF will again use the MGC format for deciding the 2024 Paris Olympics marathon teams. At an Apr. 17 JAAF board meeting done via video conferencing, executive Mitsugi Ogata said, "We will keep the same basic format in order to choose the Olympic team with transparency and fairness, with a multi-year qualifying period from 2021 to 2023. We will consider the exact mechanics of the process, for example whether the trials race should determine one or two people for the team. This time it was for a home-soil Olympics, so I think it will be difficult to do it exactly the same way next time." Up to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the results of a number of designated qualifying race in the season leading up to the Olympics were considered in choosing Olympic team members, but for the Tokyo Olympics...

Following up on Yusuke Suzuki 's win in the 50 km, Japan scored its second race walk gold with another win in the 20 km by Toshikazu Yamanishi . Where Suzuki led start-to-finish, Yamanishi waited 5 km before making a bold move to open a 17-second lead over Sweden's Perseus Karlstrom . From there he was never really under threat, Karlstrom and others shaving a few seconds off his lead but dropping back again over the final lap. In the end Yamanishi won by 15 seconds in 1:26:34, with Russian Vasiliy Mizinov overtaking Karlstrom for silver. Koki Ikeda made the top 8 with a 6th-place finish in 1:29:02, with Eiki Takahashi 10th in 1:30:04. The race walks may well end up being Japan's best shot at a medal next year in Tokyo, but there's no question that along with the men's marathon the event the home crowd will be cheering for the hardest is the men's 4x100 m relay. Running a new lineup of Yuki Koike , Kirara Shiraishi , Yoshihide Kiryu and Abdul Hakim Sani B...

Japan's Yuki Koike and Seito Yamamoto took home gold to lead the country's best daily medal total so far in athletics competition at the Jakarta Asian Games . Head-to-head with Taiwanese national record holder Chun-Han Yang the entire way through the men's 200 m, Yang leading off the curve, Koike overtaking him in the straight, Yang fighting back, both men falling across the line, Koike won in the performance of the day in a PB of 20.23 (+0.7 m/s). Yang broke his own national record by 0.10 for silver, also clocking at 20.23 but on review coming through 0.002 behind Koike. Bahraini Yaqoob Yaqoob was a distant afterthought in 20.55 for bronze, with Japanese national champ Shota Iizuka off form at 6th in 20.68. Just 23, Koike joins the A-list of Japanese sprinting just two years out from the Tokyo Olympics, while Yang's continued progression confirms his potential as an international competitor. 6th in the men's pole vault at last year's London World Cha...

Rio Olympics men's 50 km Race Walk bronze medalist Hirooki Arai followed up with Japan's first silver medal of the London World Championships, leading teammate Kai Kobayashi to a Japanese double medal haul. Far behind the championships record pace set by eventual gold medalist Yohann Diniz of France, Arai, Kobayashi and teammate Satoshi Maruo all sat together in the chase pack through 15 km. Maruo began to drop back approaching 20 km, but Arai and Kobayashi stayed up front through 35 km before making a break that took them all the way to silver and bronze medal finishes 2 seconds apart just over 8 minutes behind Diniz. Maruo fought his way back through the pack, ultimately finishing 5th just over a minute and a half behind his medalist teammates. On paper the men's 20 km crew had the potential to repeat the 50 km results, but it wasn't to be. One by one Rio Olympics 7th placer Daisuke Matsunaga and world #2 and #3-ranked Eiki Takahashi and Isamu Fujisawa sli...

The Japanese team at the London World Championships has few real medal prospects. Its best chances come in the men’s 4x100 m, where the roster includes ever newer and faster blood than last year’s Olympic silver medal-winning team in 18-year-old Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Tokyo T&F Assoc.) and 21-year-old Shuhei Tada (Kwansei Gakuin Univ.), and the men’s race walks, where the 20 km features Eiki Takahashi (Fujitsu), #2 in the world this season, and Hirooki Arai (SDF Academy), the 50 km Rio bronze medalist. If there is another solid medal prospect it comes in the women’s marathon, where Japanese athletes have won eleven medals in fifteen World Championships to date. Yuka Ando (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) ran the fastest-ever debut by a Japanese woman with a 2:21:36 at March’s Nagoya Women’s Marathon, putting her at 5th on the London entry list. There have been calls for her to be cautious in coming back with another hard marathon so soon after her first, but a run anything like wh...

by Brett Larner With the rest of the Japanese national team doing well, ranked 3rd behind the U.S.A. and China in the  medal count at the end of the first week of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, members of its athletics squad face modest expectations of one medal and five top eight finishes , the medal expected to come somewhere between the men's 4x100 m relay, the women's marathon and the men's 20 km and 50 km race walks.  No dice in the 20 km on the first day of athletics competition.  Toyo University student Daisuke Matsunaga was the best of the Japanese men at 7th in 1:20:22, 45 seconds out of the medals but, on the upside, scoring one of the JAAF's hoped-for top eight placings. No such luck in the world record-breaking women's 10000 m.  With national champion Ayuko Suzuki a scratch it fell to her junior Japan Post teammate Hanami Sekine and Yuka Takashima  (Shiseido) to try to make a dent.  Both ran the second-fastest times of their careers to date...

Bejing, China, 8/23/15 click here for complete results Women's 100 m Heat 7 -0.5 m/s 1. Rosangela Santos (Brazil) - 11.14 - Q 2. English Gardner (U.S.A.) - 11.16 - Q 3. Chisato Fukushima (Japan) - 11.23 - Q Men's 400 m Heat 3 1. LaShawn Merritt (U.S.A.) - 44.51 - Q 2. Javon Francis (Jamaica) - 44.83 - Q 3. Kevin Borlee (Belgium) - 45.01- Q ----- 6. Yuzo Kanemaru (Japan) - 45.65 Men's 400 mH Semifinal 3 1. Michael Tinsley (U.S.A.) - 48.47 - Q 2. Nicholas Bett (Kenya) - 48.54 - Q 3. Kariem Hussein (Switzerland) - 48.59 ----- 8. Yuki Matsushita (Japan) - 51.10 Men's 20 km RW 1. Miguel Angel Lopez (Spain) - 1:19:14 - PB 2. Zhen Wang (China) - 1:19:29 3. Benjamin Thorne (Canada) - 1:19:57 - NR ----- 14. Isamu Fujisawa (Japan) - 1:21:51 48. Eiki Takahashi (Japan) - 1:28:30 DNF - Yusuke Suzuki (Japan)