japan running news

Without an in-country Diamond League meet Sunday's Seiko Golden Grand Prix at the Tokyo Olympics stadium is the main event of the Japanese outdoor season. Along with the Asian Championships in South Korea in 2 weeks and July's National Championships, this is one of the best chances for Japanese athletes to score some serious world rankings points to boost their chances of making the home team for September's Tokyo World Championships. Set to be sunny in the morning, for most of the meet it looks like it'll be cloudy but hot and humid with temps peaking at 30˚ and high humidity after rain most of the day on Saturday. TVer is streaming the first part of the meet , the women's and men's javelin throw and 3000 m, men's 100 m, women's high jump and men's long jump, here starting at 10:46 a.m. Japan time, with the rest of the meet streaming here starting at 10:51 a.m. and broadcast on TBS starting at 1:00 p.m. If you've got a VPN you should be good ...

  None of the finals on Day 5 of the Budapest World Championships featured any Japanese athletes, but there were good performances in qualifying rounds in both the morning and evening sessions. First up for the day, Tomoya Karasawa didn't turn in one of the good ones, failing to clear the opening height in the men's pole vault qualifying round. Japan's best prospect for an individual medal outside of race walking, Haruka Kitaguchi was the first woman in the javelin throw and one of only seven to clear the auto-qualifying mark of 61.50 m, throwing 63.27 m. Marina Saito managed only 58.95 m for 15th in the first round, just 71 cm short of making the qualifying bracket of twelve. Men's long jumpers Yuki Hashioka , Hiromichi Yoshida and Shotaro Shiroyama were all off their game in the opening round, Hashioka jumping best with a credible 7.94 m -0.2 m/s but short of the 8.00 m that proved necessary for qualification. Yoshida jumped 7.60 m +1.2 m/s and Shiroyama only 7....

Day 4 of the Bangkok Asian Athletics Championships was the first without a single gold medal going to Japan, but there were still enough silvers and bronzes to go around. Robyn Lauren Brown of the Philippines outclassed the rest of the women's 400 mH final field, taking gold in 57.50. Eri Utsunomiya and Ami Yamamoto made it a Japanese 2-3, Utsunomiya running 57.73 for silver and Yamamoto 57.80 for bronze. Yusaku Kodama also scored silver in the men's 400 mH, running 48.96 behind Qatari winner Bassem Hemeida 's 48.64. Yuki Yamasaki won bronze in the heptathlon with 5696 points, Uzbekistan's Ekaterina Voronina taking gold in 6098 and Swapna Barman silver in 5840. Teammate Karin Odama was 4th in 5487. Another bronze came in the mixed 4x400 m relay, with Japan running 3:15.71 behind India's 3:14.70 and Sri Lanka's 3:15.41. Naoto Hasegawa and Ryoichi Akamatsu both cleared 2.23 m in the men's high jump, Hasegawa finishing 4th overall and Akamatsu 5th. ...

Mariko Morimoto (Uchida Kensetsu) brought the performance of the day in the women's triple jump on the third day of the 107th National Track and Field Championships and 39th U20 National Championships Saturday at Osaka's Yanmar Nagai Stadium. On her fifth attempt Morimoto jumped 14.16 m +0.7 m/s, a massive PB that broke the 1999-era national record by 12 cm. It was enough to move her up to 10th in the world this year, a welcome surprise to fans and federation officials in the lead-up to August's Budapest World Championships. The women's 100 mH final was the race of the day, a four-way photo finish between NR holder Mako Fukube (NKK), WC quota occupants Masumi Aoki (77 Ginko) and Yumi Tanaka (Fujitsu), and previous NR holder Asuka Terada (Japan Create Group), non-ranked as she makes another comeback this season. Terada and Aoki both clocked 12.95, Tanaka 12.96 and Fukube 12.99, and after a long review Terada was named the winner. In a way it was the most complicate...

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...

As of right now, five days into the Tokyo Olympic Games , Japan leads the medal standings with 13 gold, 4 silver and 5 bronze medals. Across sports Japanese athletes have been performing at the top level, showing both the benefits of increased investment in development over the last eight years since Japan won the 2020 Olympic bid and the home ground advantage. Track and field starts tomorrow, and while compared to some other sports it's one of Japan's weaker spots, it has a realistic shot at six medals with another eleven top 8 finishes in range. Your guide to who to watch for from the home team on the track, field and roads. Medal Chances Back when Japan first competed in the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912 it had exactly two athletes on its entire team, one marathoner and one sprinter. 109 years later not much has changed. Distance and sprints are still Japan's best chances of medaling, the race walks taking the place of the marathon, and the 4x100 m relay one of the most...

20 km race walk world record holder Yusuke Suzuki delivered Japan's first medal of the Doha World Championships, defying the heat and humid to lead to men's 50 km race walk start to finish for gold in 4:04:20. His teammates Hayato Katsuki and Tomohiro Noda didn't fare as well, Katsuki 27th of 28 finishers and Noda among the many casualties, but Suzuki's bold and brash performance in similar conditions to what the field will face in Tokyo next year, if darker, gives Japan hope that it's got at least one solid gold contender for the home game. More history made at @IAAFDoha2019 as Yusuke Suzuki wins Japan's first ever race walking #WorldAthleticsChamps title 🇯🇵🥇 Fantastic victory for the @jaaf_official athlete one year before @Tokyo2020 . 📰: https://t.co/gghIeeRTPa pic.twitter.com/bZ0UYTgVWs — IAAF (@iaaforg) September 29, 2019 The lone Japanese woman in the 50 km, Masumi Fuchise just missed a top 10 finish in 4:41:02. One of Japan's ...

A teammate of last week's Japanese Olympic marathon trials 1st and 3rd placers Honami Maeda and Rei Ohara , Mizuki Tanimoto kicked off the Doha World Championships with a 7th-place finish in the women's marathon. Starting off overly conservatively with Worlds teammates Madoka Nakano and Ayano Ikemitsu , Tanimoto was far behind the lead pack that included all three eventual medalists after just one time around the six-lap course. Hitting halfway in 1:20:11 and 33rd place, Tanimoto was one of the few people in the race to negative split, making a huge jump in position from 25 to 30 km and working her way up to land 7th in 2:39:09, just over six minutes behind winner Ruth Chepngetich (Kenya). Nakano finished 11th in 2:42:39 seconds behind 10th-placer Un Ok Jo (North Korea). In a field of just 68 starters, 28 women dropped out partway, including all five Ethiopian-born athletes. Struggling early, Ikemitsu hung on through 30 km before stepping off the course. In qualif...

Held in the stadium where Japan saw its first-ever sub-10 clocking for 100 m, Saturday's new Athlete Night Games in Fukui meet produced four national records highlighted by an incredible men's long jump competition. Yuki Hashioka (Nihon Univ.) opened with a jump of 8.32 m +1.6 m/s that shattered the national record dating way back in 1992 by 7 cm. Hibika Tsuha (Toyo Univ.) followed him with a jump of 8.21 m + 2.0 m/s that put him into the all-time Japanese top three, then bettered that with an 8.23 m +0.6 m/s. Out of nowhere, Shotaro Shiroyama (Zenrin) knocked them both back in the record books on his third jump with a new national record of 8.40 m +1.5 m/s, the #2 mark in the world so far this year and only his second time clearing 8 m with a legal wind. Japanese fans were quick to compare the trio's results to this season's Diamond League meets. DL Shanghai 🥇8m24🥈8m16🥉8m14 DL Lausanne 🥇8m32🥈8m19🥉8m13 DL London 🥇8m37🥈8m32🥉8m11 DL Fukui 🥇8...

Japan tripled its medal count on the second day of athletics competition at the Jakarta Asian Games , adding another gold, its first silver and two more bronze medals to its tally. The silver came in the morning session with Keiko Nogami 's 2nd place finish in the women's marathon, previously covered here . The gold and one bronze came in an exciting decathlon that saw defending champ  Keisuke Ushiro  and teammate Akihiko Nakamura in 2nd and tied for 3rd going into the 1500 m. Ushiro needed a 2-second margin over leader Suttisak Singkhon of Thailand to move into the gold medal position, which he did with ease. Tied with China's Kewei Gong , Nakamura needed as much of a margin as he could get over Gong to finish in the medals and 42 seconds over Singkhon to take silver. Nakamura went out hard, but although he had no trouble putting Gong away the margin he needed to make up to Singkhon was just too big. The other bronze came via one of Japan's biggest hopes. With...

With a roster somewhat depleted of top-level talent Japan took no gold but managed to pick up five silver and nine bronze medals at the July 6-9  Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneswar, India. Japanese women scored the majority of the medals, taking three silver and eight bronze medals to the men's count of two silver, one bronze. Women's 10000 m national champion Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) and men's 110 m hurdles national champ Shunya Takayama (Zenrin) were the only athletes already named to Japan's London World Championships team to participate. Matsuda took the bronze medal in the 10000 m behind Daria Maslova (Kyrghizstan) and national championships 5th-placer Yuka Hori (Japan), while Takayama missed out on bronze by 0.04 seconds as he took 4th in 13.65 (-0.6 m/s). With none of the Japanese medalists clearing London standards at the Asian Athletics Championships there were no additions beyond Matsuda and Takayama to the London team from among those wh...

2014 Asian Junior Athletics Championships Japanese Medalists Summary Taipei, Taiwan, June 12-15, 2014 click here for complete results Men's 10000 m   - June 13 1. Hazuma Hattori (Japan) - 31:10.60 2. Sharwan Kharb (India) - 31:52.37 3. Yaser Salem Bagharab (Yemen) - 32:22.42 4. Tzu-Ming Wang (Taiwan) - 36:38.02 5. Han-Hsuan Li (Taiwan) - 38:40.29 Women's 5000 m   - June 12 1. Maki Izumida (Japan) - 16:18.345 1. Daria Maslova (Kyrgyzstan) - 16:18.345 3. Ji Hyang Kim (North Korea) - 16:28.13 4. Sakiho Tsutsui (Japan) - 16:35.79 5. Sanjivini Jadhav (India) - 17:00.75 Men's 5000 m   - June 15 1. Musaab Adam M Ali (Qatar) - 14:34.07 2. Makoto Mitsunobu (Japan) - 14:38.99 3. Sharwan Kharb (India) - 14:39.41 4. Khalil Naseri (Iran) - 14:58.88 5. Wei Zhang (China) - 15:29.28 Women's 3000 m   - June 15 1. Daria Maslova (Kyrgyzstan) - 9:16.23 2. Hanami Sekine (Japan) - 9:17.55 3. Sanjivini Jadhav (India) - 9:35.02 4. Jin Hyang Pak (North...