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by Brett Larner I don't expect that many people will take the considerable time necessary to read the full texts of all four interviews in this series .  I plan to edit the most important quotes from Samuel Wanjiru’s Japanese mentors and colleagues together into a cohesive account of his career from the Japanese point of view, but in the meantime, looking at the commonalities between the interviews and other previously-published details this story emerges, incomplete as it is: Wanjiru was discovered by the Japanese scout Shunichi Kobayashi and sent to Sendai Ikuei H.S. in 2002. At Sendai Ikuei, he was educated and developed by Takao Watanabe , who focused not only on development as an athlete but also on psychological and personal development.  Watanabe receives unanimous credit in Japan as the primary influence on Wanjiru's mental and spiritual growth.  Watanabe introduced Wanjiru to Kenyan Stephen Mayaka , a longtime resident of Japan who came to assist Wanjiru in h...

The fourth in JRN's series of in-depth, original interviews with the Japanese friends and colleagues of Samuel Wanjiru , this interview with Yasuto Kimura , a popular Tokyo-based coach of amateur runners and a former Hakone Ekiden ace with Chuo University who became close friends with Wanjiru following his departure from the Toyota Kyushu corporate team in 2008, is the most personal of them all. Click here for an introduction to this series of interviews and for links to the previous interviews with Masato Imai, Stephen Mayaka, Yu Mitsuya and Koichi Morishita. Come back tomorrow for the conclusion to the series. Yasuto Kimura interviewed by Brett Larner in Kanda, Tokyo, 7/20/11 © 2011 Brett Larner all rights reserved No part of this interview may be reproduced or quoted without express written permission. photos © 2010 Yasuto Kimura all rights reserved To start off, could you talk about the nature of your relationship with Samuel Wanjiru? People are saying that I might h...

This is part two in JRN's four-part series of interviews with the key people in Samuel Wanjiru 's life in Japan.   Click here for the introduction to the series, an explanation of how it came about, and links to the other interviews .  Check back tomorrow for part three, an interview with Wanjiru's former teammates Yu Mitsuya  and Masato Imai . Barcelona Olympics marathon silver medalist Koichi Morishita is the man who showed Samuel Wanjiru how to be a marathoner, but under his coaching Wanjiru also set all of his world records from the junior 10000 m record to his three times cracking the best-ever half-marathon mark.  Six weeks after Wanjiru's death Morishita agreed to a one-on-one interview about Wanjiru's years with the Toyota Kyushu corporate team, their coach-athlete relationship, and his post-Japan marathon career.  Morishita was candid and unexpectedly introspective in his opinions of what went wrong, including his own mistakes.  In this intervie...