japan running news

by Brett Larner For only the third time in the last 20 years, the Japanese women's World Championships marathon team came up empty-handed, outdone by a superb team performance from Kenya who marked the first-ever sweep of a world-level marathon.  After a slow first half which saw Azusa Nojiri  (Team Daiichi Seimei) take the lead from 8 km to 15 km in a bid to get the pace on track, defending silver medalist Yoshimi Ozaki  (Team Daiichi Seimei) faltered when the action began at 33 km, moving backwards from the front of the pack and ultimately finishing 18th as the third woman on the Japanese team. The other four Japanese women on the team finished in PB order ranging from 5th for Yukiko Akaba  (Team Hokuren) to  Mai Ito  (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) in 22rd.  Nojiri was the first to lose touch with the leaders after the forcing the field into action, but after staying within sight of the front pack she later overtook Ito and ended up just back from Oz...

by Brett Larner Yoshimi Ozaki (Team Daiichi Seimei) scored the silver medal in the women's marathon at the 2009 World Championships in a thrilling three-way battle against eventual winner Xue Bai (China) and bronze medalist Aselefech Mergia (Ethiopia), Japan's first silver medal at the World Championships since Mizuki Noguchi finished second to Catherine Ndereba in the 2003 Paris World Championships. Holding the fastest qualifying time on the Japanese team, 2:23:30 at last year's Tokyo International Women's Marathon, Ozaki was a question mark coming into Worlds after a spring of injury and an absence from media coverage, but her powerful, efficient form was clearly operating at 100% right from the start. When Russian Nailiya Yulamanova attacked after a moderately-paced first 30 km Ozaki was one of only three athletes to follow. Men's steeplechase national record holder Yoshitaka Iwamizu came to the rescue when Ozaki missed her special drink shortly afterwards. In th...

The fact that Beijing Olympics men's marathon winner Samuel Wanjiru and previous Kenyan marathon medalists Erick Wainaina and Douglas Wakiihuri all trained under Japanese coaches has gotten a fair amount of press recently. Less well-known is the fact that Chinese runners Chunxiu Zhou, who won the bronze medal in the women's marathon in Beijing and the silver medal at last year's Osaka World Championships marathon, and Xiaolin Zhu, who was 4th in both the Beijing Olympics and Osaka World Championships marathons, are also trained by a Japanese coach, Shinya Takeuchi. I posted an interesting profile of Takeuchi on Aug. 14 and in light of the attention being paid to Wanjiru's Japanese development I thought it worthwhile to bring it back up. Click here to read Takeuchi's profile, including some discussion of Zhou and Zhu's training.

originally published in the Nikkei Newspaper http://www2.asahi.com/olympic2008/column/TKY200711260074.html translated and edited by Brett Larner When Shinya Takeuchi began to coach runners in the Chinese prefecture of Jiangsu 20 years ago, the shoes they wore were made from cheap rubber, just like those worn in Japan right after World War II. "They run marathons in these?" he thought in disbelief. When his runners had good results in international races, people involved in the Chinese running industry asked him almost every day, "What kind of drugs are you using?" He was bewildered by the difference from the Japanese running environment. Now he feels the possibilities present in Chinese runners' power. Takeuchi, 76, former head coach of the now-defunct UFJ Bank Track and Field Team, became an advisor for the Chinese national marathon team last autumn. He has been helping Chinese runners for a long time but only recently has received an official position from the...