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Showing posts with the label Japanese marathoners

‘Why Is Japan So Much Better at Running Than Everyone Else?'

https://run.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/why-is-japan-so-much-better-at-running-than-everyone-else/ photo © 2026 Brett Larner , all rights reserved

2022 World Championships Marathon Qualifiers By Country, And What It Says About Gender Equality in Japan

The qualification window for this summer's Oregon 2022 World Championships marathon wrapped up last week with the May 29 Ottawa Marathon and a couple of other races. Athletes had four ways to qualify : By meeting the qualifying standards, 2:29:30 for women and 2:11:30 for men. By finishing in the top 10 at platinum elite label marathons like Boston or New York without hitting the standards. By earning a wildcard spot by being the defending world champion. By being high up enough in the world rankings to fill the quota of 100 athletes each in the women's and men's races after everything above was taken into account. 14 countries had a total of at least 10 women and men qualify, with 3, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Japan, each having over 100 athletes on the list . No other country had more than 40. Ethiopia led the way among women with 93 qualifiers, Kenya next with 71 and Japan 3rd with 41. Apart from them only the U.S.A., Great Britain and China had more than 10 women qualify. He...

Study Finds 63.9% of Elite Japanese Track and Field Athletes Use Supplements

The degree to which elite-level Japanese track and field athletes utilize supplements has become clearer. Nearly 2/3 of athletes regularly use a supplement, with higher usage among women than men, higher usage among seniors than juniors, and higher usage in long distance than in other disciplines. Those are the findings of a paper by Shogo Tabata of the Keio University Sports Medicine Center published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Supplement usage is higher among athletes than in the general population, with some studies suggesting a typical usage level of about 60%. There are a wide variety of supplements such as vitamins and minerals, but few have clear evidence of efficacy. At the same time, some products have been known to include banned substances, creating the risk of "unintentional doping" by those who use them carelessly. Although the number of reported cases of Japanese athletes caught for doping is small, the proportion of t...

50th Japanese Woman Runs Sub-2:26

Running on International Women's Day at yesterday's Nagoya Women's Marathon , debuting 2019 National Corporate Half Marathon champion Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku) became the 50th Japanese woman in history to run under 2:26, finishing 5th in 2:23:27. Below are all 50 and their 119 performances that collectively make up the top end of women's sport in Japan. Mizuki Noguchi 2:19:12, Berlin 2005 2:21:18, Osaka Int'l 2003 2:21:37, Tokyo Int'l 2007 2:24:05, Nagoya 2013 2:24:14, Paris 2003 2:25:33, Nagoya 2012 2:25:35, Nagoya 2002 Yoko Shibui 2:19:41, Berlin 2004 2:21:22, Chicago 2002 2:23:11, Osaka Int'l 2001 2:23:42, Osaka Int'l 2009 2:23:58, Nagoya 2006 2:25:02, Nagoya 2012 2:25:51, Tokyo Int'l 2008 Naoko Takahashi 2:19:46, Berlin 2001 2:21:47, Bangkok 1998 2:21:49, Berlin 2002 2:22:19, Nagoya 2000 2:23:14, Sydney 2000 2:24:39, Tokyo Int'l 2005 2:25:48, Nagoya 1998 Mao Ichiyama 2:20:29, Nagoya 2020 2:24:33, T...