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Showing posts with the label Naoya Inoue

Japan's Team Performance at World U20 Championships

There wasn't much surprise in the events where Japan did well at the Oregon World U20 Championships , with medals in the men's 110 mH, 400 mH and 3000 m, and top 5 finishes in the women's and men's 5000 m race walks, men's 4x100 m relay, men's pole vault and long jump, men's 200 m, women's 800 m and 3000 m, and women's javelin throw. Jeremy Koga ran a 12.95 (+0.3) Asian U20 AR in the men's 110 mH semifinals, then came back in the final with a 12.97 (+0.7) in the final to take silver behind a brilliant 12.72 U20 WR by American Le'Ezra Brown . Taiju Goto was expected to medal in the men's 400 mH, but after leading the semifinals the best he could do was silver in 49.23, gold going to the Czech Republic's Michal Rada with a 48.59 European U20 AR. Expected to do better in the 1500 m, Ojiro Honda ran a 7:48.49 U20 NR in the men's 3000 m final to score bronze, only to come in near the back of the field in the 1500 m final at 14th in...

Four New Meet Records on National Sports Festival Day 2

4 meet records fell on the second day of the 2025 National Sports Festival in Shiga. In the junior men's pole vault , Naoya Inoue (Anan Hikari H.S.) was the only one to go higher than 4.80 m, and massively so. Inoue cleared 5.32 m on his 3rd attempt, setting a new MR and beating his closest competition by 52 cm. 800 m NR holders Rin Kubo (Higashi Osaka Keiai H.S.) and Ko Ochiai (Komazawa Univ.) duly took the 800 m wins here in MR time. Kubo won the junior women's race by over 3 seconds in 2:01.72, with Ochiai winning the senior men's race in 1:45.20. The men's race was actually decently competitive, with Mikuto Kaneko (Arcyell) and Hiroki Minamoto (NTN) going 1:46.25 and 1:46.47, and the top 4 all going under the old MR. Ochiai's success while still a teenager seems to be motivating other Japanese men in what is probably Japan's weakest track event. The other meet record came in the junior men's 100 m B-final , where Sekito Matsushita (Shizuoka H.S....