by Brett Larner video by naoki620 Following in the footsteps of his former Aoyama Gakuin University teammate Takehiro Deki 's win at last weekend's Gold Coast Half Marathon , Yusuke Ogura became the first Japanese man since 2001 to win the World University Games half marathon taking gold in 1:04:41. Ogura, who played a key role in AGU's course record-setting Hakone Ekiden win in January and ran 1:02:03 at February's Marugame Half Marathon, led his AGU teammate and National University Half Marathon champion Tadashi Isshiki and Yuta Takahashi (Teikyo Univ.) in a sweep of the podium, the first time in World University Games history that men from a single country have taken all three half marathon medals. A slow first 10 km kept most of the field together, but a move from the Japanese athletes shortly after that broke things up quickly, and by 15 km they were well ahead of chasers Soufiane Bouchikhi (Belgium) and Naoki Kudo (Komazawa Univ.), the runner-up b...
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