japan running news

The Asian Athletics Championships wrapped up Saturday in Gumi, South Korea with a string of record-setting performances. At the top of the list was the men's 200 m final , where Towa Uzawa ran a championships record and PB 20.21 (+0.8) to win gold, putting him at all-time Japanese #4 and all-time Asian #6. Saudi Abdul Abdu I Atafi and India's Animesh Kujur took silver and bronze in 20.31 and 20.32, with veteran Shota Iizuka 4th in a season best 20.66 that put him one step closer to a 14-straight year under 20.50. NR holder Rin Kubo turned in one of the fastest performances of her career so far in the women's 800 m final , just losing out to China's Wu Hongjiao . Wu delivered a meet record 2:00.08 for gold, Kubo just behind her in 2:00.42 for silver and India's Pooja Pooja a few strides back in 2:01.89 for bronze. Ayano Shiomi was 5th in 2:03.59. Yuta Sakiyama came up with a PB 83.75 m throw on his final attempt in the men's javelin , good enough for all-...

  After three days of athletics competition at the Hangzhou Asian Games Japan has yet to score gold, but its haul of silver and bronze medals more than doubled over the course of the two days. Men's 400 m NR holder Kentaro Sato took silver Saturday, starting slow as Fuga Sato did the leading in the first half of the race, then reeling in the competition over the last 120 m. Asian record holder Yousef Ahmed Masrahi of Saudi Arabia got away from him, just, winning gold in 45.55 with Sato in 45.57. Bahraini Abbas Yusuf Ali knocked Fuga Sato off the podium with a PB 45.65, Fuga 4th in 45.70. It took til Sunday night for the next medal to land, with Ryoma Aoki and Seiya Sunada going 2-3 in the men's 3000 m steeplechase. Favorite Avinash Mukund Sable of India took it out fast with a 2:40.97 first 1000 m, too fast to sustain but enough to set put him far out front for most of the race. Sable led at 2000 m with 5:27.48 before starting to fade, giving Aoki hope as he closed har...

We'd like to give you preview and streaming info for the Asian Athletics Championships starting tomorrow in Bangkok, Thailand, but there's not a lot to go on. Streaming should be here under the "Live" tab , but as the JAAF site notes , "There's a chance a link to streaming might be released right before the start. If one is announced, we'll let you know." 42 countries are set to compete, but no overall entry lists have been made public anywhere we've looked. The Asian Athletics Association site isn't very helpful either, its top story being the federation bureaucrats' "Gala and Awards Celebration for the 50th Anniversary of Asian Athletics Association" and almost nothing about its championships apart from a statistics PDF that starts off with a long autobiography by an AAA exec. The meet schedule is up and it has links to event start lists, but nothing has been added there yet. So, about all we can tell you right now is about...

  Heavy rain in Osaka on Friday meant most field events at the 107th National Track and Field Championships and 39th U20 National Championships got bumped to Saturday morning, meaning a packed program. So let's get to it. Streaming starts at 9:50 on the general feed above and field-dedicated field below and goes until 16:30, after which it'll be on NHK TV. Live results are here . Meet schedule and top entries in each event are below. Marks listed are athletes' best performance inside the National qualifying window. One of the main stories today is absences. The men's 110 mH heats field is solid but missing Budapest World Championships entry standard holder Rachid Muratake . The men's 400 mH final is missing Kazuki Kurokawa . Absent from the men's 100 m heats are three of its biggest names, NR holder Ryota Yamagata , former NR holder Yoshihide Kiryu  and relay team leadoff runner Shuhei Tada . Men's long jump NR holder Shotaro Shiroyama  and Yuki Hashioka  a...

The men's race walks were expected to be Japan's only real chance at medals at the Oregon 22 World Athletics Championships , but in the women's javelin throw Haruka Kitaguchi came through with the country's first-ever women's field event medal at the World Championships as she took bronze. Kitaguchi came to Eugene in good form with a first-ever Japanese win in a Diamond League event under her belt and got off strong when she led the qualifying round with a 64.32 m throw on her first attempt. Kitaguchi opened with a 62.07 m that put her in bronze medal position behind Australians Kelsey-Lee Barber and Mackenzie Little , where she stayed until the fourth round. There China's Shiying Liu threw 63.25 m to move into 2nd by 3 cm over Little, pushing Kitaguchi down to 4th. It took until the final round for Kitaguchi to respond. Summoning up a big throw, she bettered Liu by just 2 cm to overtake her at 63.27 cm. American Kara Winger also came up a big closer, throw...

The National Track and Field Championships head into their back half Saturday in Osaka. Streaming starts at 10:15 a.m. local time and NHK's TV broadcast at 3:30 p.m., with the daily schedule here , start lists here , and live results here . On the track, the last race of the day is its biggest, the men's 3000 mSC featuring NR holder Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.). A top 8 placer at the Olympics last year while still in his teens, Miura also fell in a race last year, got up, and still won in NR time. Without something spectacular happening there's almost no chance he won't win or at the very least make the Oregon team. His fellow Olympic team members Kosei Yamaguchi (Aisan Kogyo) and Ryoma Aoki (Honda) are both in the 45-deep quota at this point, Yamaguchi at 38th and Aoki at 40th, but with things too close to be safe they'll be going for the standard here. Yasunari Kusu (Ami AC) is 42nd in the quota, and beating any of the three ahead of him would give him an ou...

On the second day of track and field at the Tokyo Olympic Games , joint national record holder in the 100 m hurdles  Asuka Terada  became the first Japanese woman since 2000 to make an Olympic semifinal, running just 0.08 off her NR. Running in the fifth heat, Terada had a good start and hung on to clock 12.95 (+0.3), the fastest among time qualifiers. Her NR co-holder Masami Aoki  and veteran Ayako Kimura  both failed to move on, Aoki finishing 7th in the third heat and Kimura 7th in the opening heat. In the men's pole vault, neither Seito Yamamoto  nor Masaki Ejima  advanced out of the qualification round. Both cleared only 5.30 m to finish near the bottom of the field. In the evening session, Yuki Hashioka  had a great showing in the men's long jump qualification round, winning his group with a jump of 8.17 m, third-best in the field overall and one of only three athletes to hit the auto-qualifying standard. National record holder Shotaro Shiroyama...

Qualifiers for Japan's team for the Tokyo Olympic Games came on strong today on the third day of the 105th National Track and Field Championships and National U20 Track and Field Championships. The men's 3000 mSC final was expected to be one of the best events of the meet, and it more than lived up to it. 19-year-old NR holder Ryuji Miura  of Juntendo University  was the only Japanese man with the Olympic standard and only needed to make top 3 to guarantee his spot at the Olympics. He led most of the way, splitting 2:49 for the first 1000 m and 2:46 for the next, burning off all the competition except Japan's #2-ranked man Kosei Yamaguchi  and #5-ranked Ryoma Aoki  as the pace got hotter. Miura was leading on the second to last water jump when he slipped and fell. As Aoki and Yamaguchi went by Miura bounced back up, passing Yamaguchi and in sync with Aoki on the next jump. From there it was all his, tearing through a 66-second last lap to finish in 8:15.99 almost 2...

Japan's National Track and Field Championships kick off this Thursday in Fukuoka. It's the start of an important cycle for Japan, with national representation at this fall's Doha World Championships on the line in the lead-up to next year's Tokyo Olympics. Anyone who has cleared the Doha standard in their event will make the team if they win at Nationals, with other qualifiers and hgh-ranked athletes having to wait until mid-September to learn their fates. Over the next four days JRN will break down the favorites in each event. In the jumps, not a single athlete in any event on the women's side looks to have a realistic chance of making it to Doha without a big PB in the next couple of months. All four of last year's women's national champions, Haruka Nakano (Nippatsu) in the high jump, Juri Nanbu (Chukyo Univ.) in the pole vault, Ayaka Kora (Tsukuba Univ.) in the long jump and Eri Sakamoto (Nihon Shitsunai TC) in the triple jump, return. Of them on...

Japan has named a team featuring ten individual medalists from the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games to get an early taste of this year's World Championships  at April's Doha Asian Athletics Championships . Along with its gold medal-winning men's 4x100 m team, standouts include Jakarta gold medalists Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) in the men's 200 m, Seito Yamamoto (Toyota) in the men's pole vault and Keisuke Ushiro (Kokushin Univ. AC) in the decathlon. The women's long distance roster is strong, led by 2018 World U20 Championships 3000 m gold medalist Nozomi Tanaka (ND28 AC) in the 5000 m and the resurgent Hitomi Niiya (Nike Tokyo TC) in the 10000 m, while the most interesting name among the men is Jakarta 3000 m steeplechase bronze medalist Kazuya Shiojiri (Juntendo Univ.). 23rd Asian Athletics Championships Japanese National Team Doha, Qatar, Apr. 21-24, 2019 complete team listing underlined athletes are 2018 Asian Games medalists Women Sprints Chisat...

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...

It's 50 days to go to the 2017 London World Championships and just over a week out from the 101st Japanese National Track and Field Championships in Osaka where the country's best will be trying to earn places on the London team. Athletes will have the chance to chase standards in the weeks after Nationals, but excluding the marathon, walks and combined events, all of which are held separately from the National Championships, the following is a list of Japanese athletes already holding valid qualifying marks for London. Things are looking very thin right now, with only the men's 100 m, women's 5000 m and women's 10000 m currently capable of fielding complete contingents, although at least the men's 200 m, men's pole vault and conceivably the men's 10000 m could join that short list. With sixteen women currently holding the London standard the women's 10000 m looks to be the toughest to make even if marathon squad members Yuka Ando (Suzuki Hama...

by Brett Larner Day two of athletics at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics brought high hopes for Japanese men's long distance with a talented 10000 m squad led by national record holder Kota Murayama (Team Asahi Kasei).  But in a familiar sight to anyone who remembers the 10000 m at last year's Beijing World Championships, Murayama and Beijing last-placer Yuta Shitara (Team Honda) were out of the action before it even started.  Murayama sank to 30th of 32 finishers in 29:02.51 with Shitara, who lost to Murayama's twin brother Kenta in Beijing, a few strides ahead in 28:55.23 for 29th. Just lapping Murayama in the final meters, U.S.-based 10000 m national champion Suguru Osako (Nike Oregon Project) ran 27:51.94, the third-fastest ever by a Japanese man at the Olympics, for 17th to handily beat his pre-race ranking of 23rd in the field.  Osako held on to the lead group long into the race and kept pushing with almost even first and second half splits, kicking in the home s...

by Brett Larner videos c/o JAAF click here for Day Two results, video and report  click here for Day Three results, video and report The 100th edition of the Japanese National Track and Field Championships kicked off Friday at Nagoya's Paloma Mizuho Stadium amid on and off rain, the chance to make the Rio de Janeiro Olympic team there for the top end of the field. The race of the day was the women's 10000 m, where Japan Post teammates Ayuko Suzuki and Hanami Sekine worked together to both break the JAAF's tough selection standards.  The only woman in the field to have already broken the JAAF's 31:23.17 standard, Suzuki pushed the pace just under JAAF standard territory from the start.  Sekine, with a 31:48.90 best, alternated the lead, the two of them keeping it skimming just under standard pace and taking over when the other slowed.  The rest of the field disappeared one by one, 31:37.32 runner Yuka Takashima , in her debut in the Shiseido team uniform...