japan running news

The 100 km ultramarathon World Championships took place in Germany on Aug. 27. Japanese national team member Haruki Okayama (27, Comodi Iida) went in with the fastest time in the world this year, the favorite for the gold medal. And he ran like it, winning in 6:12:10, less than 3 minutes from the world record. Okayama is a non-elite, someone who dreamed of running the Hakone Ekiden but couldn't make his university's team, someone who ran with a corporate team as an ordinary employee. Where did this miracle breakthrough come from? Sportswriter Masato Sakai talked to him before Berlin about his "never give up no matter what" attitude and training. In the world of sports, where ability is everything, there's a man who came all the way from the bottom to stand atop Japan. His name is Haruki Okayama. In 10 years he's gone from being turned away by one of the old school Hakone Ekiden universities teams to representing Japan on its national team. Aug. 27 was the d...

Sapporo's Hokkaido Marathon is always a key developmental race on the Japanese calendar, giving top-level people experience training for and running a summer marathon, and in some recent years serving as a route to the MGC Race, Japan's Olympic marathon trials. That was the case in the race's return this year after cancelations in 2020 and 2021, with four men and one woman making the cut for the the 2024 Olympics MGC in September next year. The top 3 Japanese men had to clear 2:14 and 4th-6th needed 2:12 or better to make it. Pacers took a lead group of almost 50 through halfway on a steady pace around 2:10:30 in good conditions by summertime Sapporo standards, cool and thinly cloudy. Just past the half mark, debuting college student Luka Musembi (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) took off, taking his projected finish down to mid-2:09 and gapping the rest of the field. Dominic Nyairo (NTT Nishi Nihon) was the next to make a move, closing to within 10 seconds of Musembi but unable to ...

Relative newcomers Haruki Okayama and Jumpei Yamaguchi ran big PBs to take the top two spots in the men's race at the IAU 100 km World Championships Saturday in Berlin. 2018 world champ Hideaki Yamauchi was a last-minute scratch after testing positive for COVID-19, leaving Okayama, Yamaguchi and world record holder Nao Kazami to take things out hard in a quintet with Brazilian Felipe Silva and French athlete Guillaume Ruel . Ruel soon broke away to open a lead of around 2 minutes by halfway. Behind him, a South African trio caught up to the Japanese group, prompting Yamaguchi to take off in pursuit of the lead. On every 7.5 km lap he closed around 30 seconds on Ruel, finally coming within 20 seconds at around 70 km. But just as he was about to take the lead, Yamaguchi ran into trouble, at exactly the time that Okayama drove by hard to move into 1st instead of him. Running the 100 km distance for only the second time, by 77.5 km he had almost a minute lead over Ruel and never ...

The IAU 100 km World Championships are this Saturday in Berlin, Germany, and Japan has sent strong teams with every woman under 7:40 and 2 of the 3 men under 6:20 for the 100 km distance. 2018 gold medalist Hideaki Yamauchi (Hamamatsu Hotniks RC) is out after testing positive for coronavirus, but world record holder Nao Kazami (Aisan Kogyo) remains to lead the men. The fastest non-Japanese athlete on the entry list is American Rajpaul Pannu at 6:28:31. Considering that 3rd Japanese man Junpei Yamaguchi (Eldoreso) has run 6:22:35 it looks like the potential for a Japanese men's podium sweep is there, but things are never that easy. 2018 bronze medalist Mai Fujisawa (Sapporo Excel AC) and 7:27:46 runner Miho Nakata (Chiba T&F Assoc.) lead the women. Only three other women in the field, European record holder Dominika Stelmach (Poland), Radka Churanova (Czech Republic) and Camille Chaigneau (France), have broken 7:30, giving Nakata a good shot at an individual medal if ...

On Aug. 24 the organizing committee of Sunday's Hokkaido Marathon announced that elite women Mao Uesugi (Starts) and Chiharu Ikeda (Hitachi) have withdrawn from the race. Uesugi has tested positive for coronavirus, while Ikeda sustained an injury to her left ankle during training. Translator's note: This news follows last week's announcement that 2020 Olympic marathon trial winner Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) had withdrawn from Hokkaido with COVID-19. With a 2:22:29 in Osaka in January Uesugi was the fastest woman in the original field , with Maeda 3rd at 2:23:30 and Ikeda 5th at 2:26:50. Uesugi is also entered in November's New York City Marathon. Still on the women's list in Hokkaido, a major chance to qualify for next year's Olympic marathon trials, are: Natsumi Matsushita (Tenmaya) - 2:23:05 (3rd, Osaka Int'l 2022) Haruka Yamaguchi (AC Kita) - 2:26:35 (7th, Osaka Int'l 2020) Miharu Shimokado (SID Group) - 2:29:20 (12th, Tokyo 2022) Yui Okada (Otsuka Se...

A popular race that brought in 10,000 participants every year pre-pandemic, the organizers of the Shizuoka Marathon have announced that the event is being discontinued due to the difficulties of handling coronavirus protocols and of covering race expenses. Launched in 2014, the Shizuoka Marathon's course passed local landmarks related to shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa and offered views of Mt. Fuji, leading to its popularity as a mass-participation race. But amid the coronavirus pandemic its last three editions were all canceled. On Aug. 23 the Shizuoka Marathon's executive committee, made up of members of the Shizuoka Chamber of Commerce and Industry and of the city government, announced that the race would be discontinued indefinitely. The committee cited the difficulty of preventing crowded conditions and of taking other measures against the coronavirus, as well as paying for the expenses involved in putting the race on amid soaring labor and material costs. A spokesperson for the ...

Today's the 25th anniversary of when I first moved to Japan. It's been interesting. If I had to pick one highlight, this pic was probably it. Glad as always I decided to move somewhere guns aren't part of day-to-day life. Re: the pic, it's of Barcelona '92 Olympic silver medalist Koichi Morishita , me, and Spanish '92 Olympian Jose Esteban Montiel running the 2017 Barcelona Marathon. I started running marathons in '93 after watching Morishita vs. Hwang Young-cho at the Barcelona Olympics. Somehow, 25 years later Barcelona hired me to bring Morishita, Hwang and Yuko Arimori to the marathon for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Olympic marathon with the other three medalists. I was going to run, and Morishita, who doesn't really run any more, decided the night before to jump in and run the first 11.5 km with me . I tend to be a pretty lucky person and have had a lot of good things happen these 25 years, and some not so good, but of all of them t...

An interview with 1:09:50/2:26:35 club runner Haruka Yamaguchi  ahead of Sunday's Hokkaido Marathon where she and others will be trying to qualify for the 2023 MGC Race, Japan's trials for the 2024 Paris Olympics.