japan running news

After last weekend's massive total of 53 people sub-28 for 10000 m at the Hachioji Long Distance and MARCH Taikosen meets , another 17 did it Saturday in the A-heat at the last full Nittai University Time Trials meet of the year. After multiple heats saw winning times under 28:10, Amos Bett (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) led the 16th heat with a  27:44.02 PB, just beating Emmanuel Yegon (Subaru) who was 2nd in 27:44.23. The next 3 were all in 27:45, the top Japanese finisher being Tatsuya Iyoda (Fujitsu) in 27:45.72 for 5th. A total of 9 Japanese men broke 28 minutes, with former Tokai University runner Shotaro Ishihara (SGH) making a corporate league breakthrough in 27:53.19 for 11th. Nittai's Ryuto Hirashima ran a school record 27:56.84 for 13th to add to the school records at Aoyama Gakuin University , Chuo University , Koku Gakuin University and Rikkyo University last weekend. Out of the 20 university teams set to run January's Hakone Ekiden, 13 now have at least one cu...

They say in Hakone Ekiden circles that the team that wins the summer wins Hakone. Aiming to break a three-year streak of finishing off the podium at the main event, 2019 Hakone winner Tokai University is aiming to take the top position at the Oct. 19 Yosenkai Hakone qualifier half marathon. Led by 4th-year captain Yuto Kajitani , the Tokai team is putting in more mileage this summer than usual. The Shonan-based Tokai's 2019 Hakone title was its first-ever win at Japan's biggest race. Since then it has finished as high as 2nd and 5th, but in the last three years it was 11th, 15th and 11th and missed out on top 10 and a guaranteed place at the following year's Hakone. To try to get back to its winning ways the team is training this summer in Nagano at Lake Shirakaba and at altitude in Sugadaira. "This season our goal is to make top 5 at both the National University Ekiden and the Hakone Ekiden," said Kajitani. Everyone on the team is working actively to make that g...

  Osaka Geijutsu University performing arts major Hikaru Kitagawa kicked off the final day of the Chengdu World University Games with the first Japanese women's gold medal of the games in athletics, winning the half marathon in 1:13:17 by 14 seconds over Turkey's Yayla Kilic Gonen . And winning it in style. 3 seconds behind Kilic Gonen at 20 km, Kitagawa closed from there to the finish in 3:08, or 2:51/km pace, the kind of split you'd more often see in a men's race. You have to wonder if the 20 km split was accurate, but anyway Kitagawa made up 17 seconds in 1.0975 km, which is pretty good. Fatma Karasu made it a Turkish 2-3 with a 1:14:28 for bronze. Rio Einaga of Osaka Gakuin University was 8th in 1:15:34 and national champion Meijo University's Saki Harada 14th in 1:16:36, enough to land Japan the team silver behind Turkey. China took the team bronze. Japanese men usually dominate the World University Games half marathon given their focus on that distance for...

  Waseda University's Yudai Nishi  gave Japan its first silver medal of the Chengdu World University Games on the fourth day of athletics competition, taking 2nd in the men's 200 m final. After winning SF1 in a PB of 20.43 +0.9 m/s, Nishi started conservatively in the final. In the middle of the field coming into the straight, Nishi closed the fastest in the field to move up into 2nd but came up short of catching gold medalist Isadore Matsoso of South Africa. Matsoso clocked 20.36 to Nishi's 20.46, with Amlan Borgohain of India taking bronze with a season best 20.55. Waseda's Aoi Inage was last in 21.10 after having run a PB 20.64 +1.1 m/s for 3rd in SF3. Both Japanese men in the 5000 m heats qualified easily for the final, Komazawa University's Taiyo Yasuhara jogging a 14:42.91 for 5th in Heat 1 and Tokai University's Shotaro Ishihara cruising to 2nd in Heat 2 in 14:31.91. Tsukuba University's Saki Katagihara made it through to the final in the women...

Two-time national champion Komazawa University rode the momentum of its course record win at last month's Izumo Ekiden to score a third-straight National University Men's Ekiden win Sunday in Nagoya and Mie, its 15th national title in 29 starts under head coach Hiroaki Oyagi . Komazawa's leading runner Kensuke Tsubura was 4th on the opening leg, star 1st-year Keita Sato broke the 2nd leg course record to move into 2nd, 60:40 half marathoner Chikara Yamano took the lead on the 3rd leg, and from there it was only a question of whether Komazawa could keep it together and how much they would win by. Komazawa runners won three of the remaining five stages after Yamano and took top 2 on another, with 4th-year Ren Tazawa running an incredible 49:38 course record on the 17.6 km 7th leg, 43 seconds under the old record. Anchor Kyosuke Hanao had a lead of over a kilometer for the 19.7 km 8th leg and could have jogged it in, but he soloed a 57:30 stage win to bring Komazawa h...

Things have been in a bit of a lull the last week or two with the Tokyo Olympics test event, university and corporate regional championship meets and more out of the way and everyone getting ready for the National Track and Field Championships in Osaka near the end of the month. But there is a lot going on this weekend, even if the leading edge of rainy season means conditions will not exactly be ideal. Friday through Sunday the National University Individual Track and Field Championships happen in Kanagawa, the lesser cousin of September's National University Track and Field Championships without the team scoring. National record holder Ryuji Miura  (Juntendo Univ.) is entered in the 3000 mSC, but with a place at the Olympics already guaranteed there doesn't look to be much reason for him to run except as a training run. 13:40 is the new sub-14, with the entire men's 5000 m A-heat field of 31 having bests under 14 minutes, 15 of them plus another 3 in the B-heat from Aoya...

Another weekend, another busy couple of days on the track despite the growing number of prefectural states of emergency.  Regional corporate track and field championships kicked off Saturday with the Chugoku region's 5000 m component in Hiroshima. Dan Kiplangat  (JFE Steel) took the top spot in the men's A-heat in 13:44.87, with Ai Hosoda  (Edion) outkicking Rebecca Njeri Mwangi  (Daiso) for the women's win in 15:35.79. Further south in Fukuoka the same day, Benard Koech  (Kyudenko) won the Sayagatani Time Trials men's 5000 m A-heat in 13:35.95.  Up in Kanagawa, the Nittai University Time Trials were back for their 287th edition. Saturday in the men's 10000 m A-heat, Richard Kimunyan  (Hitachi Butsuryu) won in 27:45.64 just ahead of Rio Olympics 10000 m silver medalist Paul Tanui , who made his debut in the Sunbelx  supermarket uniform with a 27:45.96 for 2nd. Nobody else broke 28 minutes. Dolphine Omare  (U.S.E. RC) won the women's 5000 ...

With the Japanese academic and fiscal year ending Wednesday, this year saw one last blowout with decently competitive track time trial meets across the country. At the Asahi Kasei  corporate team's home track in Nobeoka , 2016 Rio Olympics steepler Kazuya Shiojiri  (Fujitsu) led five men under the 28:16.00 B-standard for May's 10000 m National Championships, winning in 28:09.10. Olympic marathon team alternate Shohei Otsuka  (Kyudenko) had a bad day of it, off the back in the first lap and finishing last in 29:55.91. Keijiro Mogi  (Asahi Kasei) led start to finish in the slower heat to win in 28:48.58. In suburban Tokyo, National University Ekiden and Hakone Ekiden champ Komazawa University  dominated the fast races at the Setagaya Time Trials meet. Komazawa's Takumi Karasawa  won the 5000 m A-heat in 13:40.90, with teammate Mebuki Suzuki  bouncing back from qualifying for the World University Games half marathon two weeks ago to win the 3000 m A-he...

It was a strange sight to see the biggest race of them all run through empty streets mostly stripped of the millions of fans who always line them. But as Japan's coronavirus bill comes due, it was a relief just to see the Hakone Ekiden 's 97th running happen at all. The first km of the 21.3 km First Stage was possibly the slowest in Hakone history, with the entire field practically walking its way through the first 800 m before Kiseki Shiozawa  (Tokai Univ.) got it moving enough to clock a 3:35 opening split. Things quickly picked up to more normal between 2:50 and 2:55/km, but the slow start meant that 18 out of the field of 21 were still together when the pack hit the climb onto the bridge just before 20 km. There and on its downhill end some of the bigger names made moves that broke the pack down, with Shiozawa and Koki Kamata  (Hosei Univ.) pulling away to make it a head-to-head race for the stage title.  Surprisingly Kamata was the one who got away, giving Hosei its...

  About three quarters of the way through the 52nd running of the National University Men's Ekiden broadcast commentator Yasuyuki Watanabe , head coach of the Sumitomo Denko corporate team, former Waseda University head coach, and one of the all-time greats of the university ekiden world, said, "I've been doing race commentary for five years now, and this is the best race I've ever seen." And he was right. It was. It was a strange fluke that defending champion Tokai University and the three favorites, Juntendo University , Aoyama Gakuin University and Komazawa University , got off to very rocky starts. Two stages into the day's eight Komazawa was in 9th, Juntendo 10th after leading the first stage, AGU a dismal 14th, and Tokai an unthinkable 17th in a field of 25. The door was open for some of the ambitious teams ranked in the middle of the field to take advantage of the situation, and teams like #7-ranked Josai University , #8-ranked Meiji University , ...