japan running news

Two of Japan's hopefuls for making their final at the Tokyo Olympics , men's 110 m national record holder Shunsuke Izumiya  and previous NR holder  Taio Kanai both came up short in the semifinals at today's morning session. Running first, Kanai started well but caught his trailing foot on the eighth hurdle and fell, getting up to finish in 26.11. Izumiya hit the first hurdles, but while it didn't seem to have much of an impact on him he lost his balance after hitting the eighth hurdle and finished 3rd in his semi, just 0.03 from making the final on time. The lone Japanese man in the javelin throw, Takuto Kominami  threw 78.39 m to finish 19th in the qualifying round, just over 4 m short of getting into the top 12 and moving on to the final. The only Japanese athlete competing in the evening session, Nozomi Tanaka  shaved another fraction off her own record to make it through her 1500 m semifinal in 3:59.19. © 2021 Mika Tokairin, all rights reserved

With the New Zealand and Australian summer series rolling on, four Japanese athletes won events at Auckland's Sir Graeme Douglas International meet. Kosei Yamaguchi took the men's 3000 m steeplechase just a fraction of a second off his PB in 8:31.25, resisting the early fast pace set by Yasunari Kusu and then dispatching Australian James Nipperness over the last two laps to take the win. Japan's #3-ranked steepler, Yamaguchi's performance moves up to the cusp of top 45 in the world, limited to three athletes per country, putting this summer's Tokyo Olympics in range. Qualifying for Tokyo for sure in the women's 5000 m was half marathon national record holder Hitomi Niiya . Like Yamaguchi running with early pacing from other Japanese athletes, Niiya mostly soloed her way to a 15:07.02 PB, taking just over 3 seconds off her old best from the 2012 London Olympics and clearing the Tokyo Olympics qualifying standard by almost as much. Niiya said pre-race th...

Men's 400 m national champion Julian Walsh (Fujitsu) ran 45.78 to win the 15th Twilight Games  for the fourth year in meet record time Sunday at Kanagawa's Keio University. Meet records were also set in the women's 1500 m, with 2019 National Championships runner-up Nozomi Tanaka (Toyota Jidoshokki TC) winning in 4:18.52, the men's high jump, where Ryo Sato (Tonichi Insatsu) cleared 2.25 m, and the men's javelin throw, where Takuto Kominami (Tsukuba Univ.) threw a PB 81.11 m for the win. National champion Ryohei Arai (Suzuki Hamamatsu AC) was only 3rd with a throw of 76.84 m. Despite breaking his own meet record to win a fourth Twilight Games title, Walsh was unhappy with his performance. His time was just 0.48 short of the 2019 Doha World Championships qualifying standard. "I want to rework my training and go for the standard again," he said with obvious disappointment. Walsh had planned to hold back on the back straight and then push the end, but...

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...