japan running news

The performance of the 2nd day of Japan's 110th National Track and Field Championships came c/o the latest monster to come out of Kyoto's Rakunan H.S. , 400 m hurdler Taiju Goto . In the opening round heats Goto, who turned 17 last month, closed hard to win his heat in 48.31, a PB by nearly a second and the fastest-ever U18 time anywhere in the world. And at only 0.42 off the senior NR held by the great Dai Tamesue , there's a lot of optimism for more in the final and the rest of the season. Another great performance came in the men's 200 m heats, where Soshi Mizukubo moved up to all-time #2 on the Japanese lists with a 20.07 (+0.5) PB to win Heat 3, 0.04 off another antique NR held by another legend, Shingo Suetsugu . By comparison the 100 m seemed pretty tame, with veteran Shuhei Tada scoring his first national title in 5 years in only 10.17 (+0.1) in what seems like an off-year for the event in Japan. After leading the women's 200 m heats in 23.01 (+0.1) Abiga...

A Tokyo Olympian in the men's 100 m, Shuhei Tada (29, Sumitomo Denko) has announced that he is taking a break. Tada finished 7th in the 100 m at the Aug. 20 Twilight Games at Kanagawa's Nissan Stadium, running 10.32 (-0.3). After that race Tada said, "I was feeling tired. But some of the others who had been racing a lot still put in good times, so I think my lack of training after my injury last year is impacting me now." Tada was unable to hit the 10.00 qualifying standard for September's Tokyo World Athletics Championships. "I'm going to take some time off and rest for a while until the day comes when there's a way forward." In 2017 Tada ran a wind-aided 9.94, the first time a Japanese man broke 10 on Japanese soil. With his fast start he was an important part of Japan's bronze medal-winning 4x100 m relay teams at the 2017 and 2019 World Championships. Given the recent surge in the number of talented young athletes Tada said he found inspi...

Coming up through the ranks as Japan's next top-level steeper, Yutaro Niinae broke through with a 5-second PB of 8:20.36 to win at the Yogibo Athletics Challenge Cup Sunday in Niigata and bump himself up to all-time Japanese #6. With pacing early on from Aisan Kogyo teammate Philemon Kiplagat , Niinae had the confidence to break away from the field of 6 just after halfway, opening over 10 seconds on Kiplagat by the end of the race. Hibiki Obara was 3rd in 8:36.68. Teenaged national record holders Ko Ochiai , 17, and Rin Kubo , 16, went for aggressive times in the 800 m finals, Ochiai going through 400 m in 51 but fading to 1:46.88. "I wanted to go for the Tokyo World Championships qualifying standard," he said, "but that first lap felt really fast. I learned a lot at the World U20 Championships and that even though I'm at the top Japan I still have a long way to go internationally." Kubo almost perfectly matched the 200 m splits from her sub-2 NR this sum...

The Asian Indoor Athletics Championships took place Feb. 17-19 in Tehran, Iran, women's events happening in morning sessions and men's in evening sessions without overlap. The small Japanese team of 14 took four gold medals, four silvers, and one bronze. Asuka Terada got things rolling for the small Japanese team with a silver in the women's 60 mH, running 8.18 to win her heat and then 8.21 in the final behind Indian gold medalist Jyothi Yarraji 's 8.12. China's Zhang Mingkun fouled on 4 of his 6 attempts in the men's, but his 5th attempt of 7.97 m was enough for gold. Japan's Yuto Toriumi and Daiki Oda took silver and bronze at 7.89 m and 7.76 m. Nanako Matsumoto won the women's 400 m final in 55.14 over Iranians Nazanin Fatemeh Eidan and Kazan Rostami , with Haruna Kuboyama 4th in 56.28 almost a second behind Rostami. Yuma Yamamoto had a dominant run for gold in the women's 3000 m, running 9:16.71 to win by almost 10 seconds over India...

Opposite the Hangzhou Asian Games and World Road Running Championships, the Continental Tour Bronze Yogibo Athletics Challenge Cup meet took place this weekend in Niigata. The highlight on Saturday came in its last race, the men’s 5000 m A-heat, where 20-year-old Shunsuke Yoshii , a 2nd-year at Hakone Ekiden runner-up Chuo University , ran 13:22.01 for the win after getting quality pacing almost the entire way from pacer Amos Bett (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.). Chuo 4th-year Shota Nakano was 2nd in 13:28.04 and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) 3rd in 13:29.12. Combined with their older brothers Yamato Yoshii and Kazuki Tamura , Yoshii and Tamura now stand as the fastest and 3rd-fastest brothers over 5000 m in Japanese history. Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) handled pacing work in the women’s 5000 m, where Wakana Kabasawa (Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) was the last one left standing at Akidor’s pace with a 15:36.47 for the win. 2nd-placer Yuna Takahashi ran 15:42.37, with 3rd and 4th-place Mikun...

Like the National University Track and Field Championships two weeks ago, this long weekend's National Corporate Track and Field Championships come at a funny point in the season, after two months of road season base training in Hokkaido and right at the start of ekiden and overseas marathon season. Half the country is in Berlin this weekend and another chunk is at the new Okukuma Ekiden , a raced backed by Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University head coach Susumu Hara that brings together top high school, university and corporate league men's teams. But a lot of corporate leaguers will be lining up in Gifu for Corporate Nationals. Day 1 is being streamed live above starting at 15:25 Friday local time. The main events start at 15:30 with the first-round heats of the men's 100 m, featuring past 4x100 m national relay team members Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko), Ryuichiro Sakai (Osaka Gas) and Shota Iizuka (Mizuno). The junior women's 3000 m at 16:30 has a pret...

Japan's never-ending outdoor track season rolls on this weekend with its last major meet, the 69th edition of the National Corporate Track and Field Championships at Osaka's Nagai Stadium. Running Friday through Sunday, the entry lists are heavy on members of the Tokyo Olympic team including men's 20 km race walk silver medalist Koki Ikeda  and bronze medalist Toshikazu Yamanishi , and three of the four members of Japan's 4x100 m relay team, national record holder Ryota Yamagata , Shuhei Tada , and Yuki Koike . The meet will be streamed live on the organizers' Youtube channel , with streaming scheduled for 17:00~19:00 local time Friday, 13:20~19:00 Saturday, and 13:10~18:00 Sunday. © 2021 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

In what was considered Japan's best chance of medaling in Tokyo Olympics athletics, the Japanese men came up with a 6th-place finish by national record holder Masatora Kawano  in the final Olympic men's 50 km race walk. 2018 Asian champion Hayato Katsuki  had an early setback, losing a shoe in the first couple of km and never making his way back into contact. Kawano and national champion Satoshi Maruo  stayed near the front of the main pack until a move from Canadian Evan Dunfee  began to break it up.  Maruo soon fell off, but Kawano looked to be one of the medal contenders as the pack turned into five behind breakaway leader Dawid Tomala  of Poland. Without warning, around 42 km Kawano suddenly pulled off the course and went to his hands and knees to vomit. He could have been out of it at that point, but Kawano quickly bounced back up and set off to regain contact. He did, but the effort cost him in the final push. Tomala took gold in 3:50:08, with Germa...

Japan's women's and men's 4x100 m relays were the only ones in action in the morning session on the seventh day of track and field competition at the Tokyo Olympics . The women's team performed up to ability, delivering a season best 43.44 to finish 7th in their heat and not advancing to the final. The men's 4x100 m team has faced more pressure in the lead-up to this Olympics than anybody except maybe Japan's marathoners, so much so that the official Japanese broadcaster has been airing ads for the men's 4x100 m final all throughout the last week and a half on the assumption that the Japanese men would be there.  They will be, but barely. Japan finished 3rd in the first heat in 38.16 to take an auto-qualifying spot by 0.02 over France. With the two time qualifying spots going to Germany and Ghana in the second heat in 36.06 and 36.08 it was closer than anyone would have liked to a major embarrassment, and with Japan the slowest of the eight qualifiers for t...

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...

Three athletes picked up guaranteed spots on the Olympic team in off and on rain on the second day of the National Track and Field Championships and National U20 Track and Field Championships Friday in Osaka. Women's javelin throw national record holder Haruka Kitaguchi  scored her place with a 61.49 m final throw for the win, having already broken the Olympic qualifying standard and meeting the JAAF's criterium of a top 3 placing. That was a tougher job to pull off in the men's 100 m final, where five of the eight men on the starting line had the Olympic standard. The fast-starting Shuhei Tada  did his usual thing, out front early with national record holder Ryota Yamagata  to his left and the rest of the field just behind. But after years of getting run down in the last 30 m, this time Tada pulled it off. holding his position to win his first national title in 10.15 (+0.2). Yamagata faded and was overtaken by Tokai University 's Bruno Dede , who was 2nd in a PB of 10....

In the midst of rapidly rising new coronavirus infection numbers, Osaka held the 88th edition of its prefectural track and field championships at the massive Nagai Stadium over Thursday and Friday's national holidays. Not usually a big draw for high-level talent, the lack of racing opportunities these days meant more big names than usual, including 2017 and 2019 World Championships men's 4x100 m bronze medalist Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko), who won the 100 m final in 10.46 (-0.5), and women's discus throw national record holder Nanaka Kori (Kyushu Kyoritsu Univ.), who dropped one of ten new meet records at the meet, six by women and four by men. A breakdown of the new records: Seika Aoyama (Osaka Seikei AC) ran the second-fastest 400 m time ever by a Japanese woman, 52.38, to win her qualifying heat in meet record time, going on to win the final in 54.11. Yuzu Nishide (Kansai Gaikokugo Univ.) took almost 15 seconds off the women's 3000 m steeplechase meet r...

Japanese athletes were busy on the track overseas this weekend. At Friday's Stumptown Twilight meet in Portland, indoor mile Asian record holder  Nanami Arai (Honda) took 2nd in the men's 1500 m in 3:39.58, his second time this season breaking 3:40. It used to be a rarity to see a Japanese man clear 3:40, something that happened once every couple of years, but so far this season four Japanese men have done it a total of six times. If the distance had even a fraction of the prestige of the Hakone Ekiden, or of that it has in the U.S., there's no doubt there'd be more. Speaking of distances with prestige, on the first day of London's Muller Anniversary Games Diamond League spectacular Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) became the third Japanese man to join the sub-10 club, running 9.98 (+0.5 m/s) for 4th in the men's 100 m final. Koike also ran 2nd on the Japanese men's 4x100 m relay team, which clocked a season best 37.78 for 2nd despite featuring only two r...

https://www.iaaf.org/competitions/iaaf-world-relays/news/world-relays-yokohama-day-1

Hayato Katsuki kicked off the final day of  Jakarta Asian Games  athletics competition with Japan's last individual medal of the Games, a gold in the men's 50 km racewalk. Katsuki finished in 4:03:30 more than three minutes up on silver medalist Qin Wang of China and almost seven minutes ahead of bronze medalist Hyun Myeong Joo of South Korean despite sustaining a five-minute time penalty 34 km into the race. Japan's Satoshi Maruo was another three minutes back in 4th. Indoor mile national record holder Ryoji Tatezawa was in range of a top six finish at best in the men's 1500 m, but in a race that went out slowly enough for announcers to be comparing it to a Japanese high school qualifying round race Tatezawa lacked the gears to stay relevant over the final lap, finishing 9th of 11 finishers in 3:49.40. The relays went about as expected. The women's 4x100 m and 4x400 m each finished 5th, while the men's teams brought home medals over both distances....

Unusually cool weather throughout the weekend worked to the advantage of the athletes in distance events at Kanagawa's National University Individual Track and Field Championships , where the meet records fell in both the men's and women's 5000 m. The poorer cousin of September's National University Track and Field Championships, the individual meet features a reduced program, no team scoring, and some competition from Taiwan. Coming just a week before the National Track and Field Championships many of Japan's best collegians tend to give it a miss, but the level of competition is often high all the same. In the women's race first-year Yuka Suzuki (Daito Bunka Univ.) surprised the field, breaking the meet record set six years ago by current top-level pro  Rina Nabeshima  by 6 seconds to win the B-heat in 15:46.84. Fourth-year Honoka Tanaike (Kyoto Sangyo Univ.) and Rino Goshima (Chuo Univ.) were both under Nabeshima's record in the A-heat in 15:49.37 ...

The day Japan has been waiting for has finally arrived. Riding a wave of success in Japanese men's sprinting that in the last year has seen 4x100 m medals at the Rio Olympics and London World Championships and six men clear 10.10, Yoshihide Kiryu (Toyo University) outran his London teammate Shuhei Tada (Kwansei Gakuin University) to become the first Japanese man ever to legally clear the 10-second barrier as he won the National University Championships 100 m final in 9.98 (+1.8 m/s) Saturday in Fukui. After struggling with a sluggish start at the Taipei World University Games late last month Tada was back to his usual form, quick out of the blocks to open an early lead over Kiryu and the rest of the field. But over the second half Kiryu continued to build, passing Tada and dipping across the line to stop the clock at 9.99. The crowd erupted, but with the memory of Koji Ito 's 10.00 national record, initially a 9.99 that was adjusted to 10.00 in the official results, th...

In front of an almost sellout crowd packing the stadium to see the breakthrough Taiwanese men's sprinters in action, Japan wrapped the final day of athletics competition at the Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade with a pair of 4x100 m relay medals that assured it the top spot on the overall medal table. The women's 4x100 m team, comprised of Ichiko Iki , Miyu Maeyama , Mizuki Nakamura and Sayaka Takeuchi , were well off lead pair Kazakhstan and Switzerland through the race, lagging a relatively short distance behind bronze medal position Poland. Japan crossed the finish line in 4th in 44.56, breaking a collegiate national record that had stood for almost 11 years but short of the medals. That changed on review, though, when winners and defending gold medalists Kazakhstan were disqualified for a lane violation. The DQ bumped Japan up to an unexpected bronze medal. The atmosphere in the stadium was raucous for the men's 4x100 m featuring Taiwan's very own 100 m gold m...

Following up on Ai Hosod a's bronze medal in the Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade women's 10000 m yesterday, Rio Olympian Kazuya Shiojiri capped the second day of athletics competition with 10000 m bronze of his own. Always near the front, Shiojiri helped shape the lead quartet that included defending silver medalist Nicolae Soare (Romania) and Ugandans Sadic Bahati and John Kateregga . All four took turns leading at a steady pace between 2:53 and 2:54/km before Kateregga fell off in the second half. Shiojiri lost a few meters to a short surge by Soare near 7000 m and, although he didn't lose ground, couldn't quite regain his footing. By the time the last duel between Bahati and Soare started Shiojiri was out of range, settling for bronze. Both of the lead pair clocked new PBs despite the humid conditions, Bahati scoring gold in 29:08.68 and Soare silver again in 29:12.76. Shiojiri rolled in 8 seconds back in 29:20.96 to take Japan's second medal of the Games...

Ai Hosoda became the first Japanese medalist of the Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade, winning bronze in the women's 10000 m to wrap the first day of athletics competition. 【 #台北ユニバーシアード 】 女子10000m 細田あいが銅メダル🥉 （写真：奥井隆史） #陸上 #ユニバーシアード pic.twitter.com/tq9XLAU99r — スポーツナビ・陸上編集部 (@sn_gorin) August 24, 2017 Leading the field with a sub-32 best, 19-year-old Yuki Munehisa led the first 9000 m on the race before being overtaken by Daria Maslova (Kyrgyszstan),   Sanjivani Jadhav (India) and Hosoda. On the last lap Maslova kicked away to gold in 33:19.27 less than 3 seconds ahead of Jadhav, with Hosoda 6 seconds behind for bronze. Munehisa fell to 4th, with third team member Natsuki Sekiya , a favorite to medal in the 5000 m, off her game at 12th in 35:21.19. 【 #ユニバーシアード 】 多田修平(関西学院大) 3組1着 0.0 10.29 スタートから1位をキープし、安定したレース展開でした！ 準決勝進出です！！ #青春に駆けろ pic.twitter.com/I5UBAidmIE — 日本学生陸上競技連合 (@iuauj) August 23, 2017 With the rest of the day devoted to qualifying rounds Ho...