by Brett Larner click here for part two Japan's 71st National Sports Festival cleared the midpoint of its five days of athletics competition Sunday. Meet records have fallen in five events so far, the highlight being the men's 10000 m race walk where Rio Olympians Eiki Takahashi (Team Fujitsu) and Daisuke Matsunaga (Toyo Univ.) dueled to push each other under the meet record, national record holder Takahashi setting a solid new mark of 38:21.88 but national junior record holder Matsunaga also more than 25 seconds under the old record set two years ago by 20 km world record holder Yusuke Suzuki (Team Fujitsu). Another Rio Olympian, women's 100 m national record holder Chisato Fukushima (Hokkaido Hi-Tech AC) duly took the 100 m final in 11.66 ( +0.5 m/s ). Two members of the Rio silver medal-winning Japanese 4x100 m men's relay team, national champion Asuka Cambridge (Dome) and Ryota Yamagata (Seiko), were scheduled to run the 100 m, but while Yamagata won h...
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