Large Japanese Leads to Berlin

Outcomes at this 12 months’s Berlin Marathon have been massive total, with 6 girls beneath 2:21 and 14 males beneath 2:07, and in each the ladies’s and males’s races a number of Japanese athletes had nice days. Within the girls’s race Paris Olympics marathon alternate Ai Hosoda (Edion) and Tokyo Olympics marathon alternate Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) ran the complete approach collectively, 1:10:13 via midway and a couple of:13:09 at 40 km. Hosoda had the higher closing velocity, ending in an all-time Japanese #7 2:20:31 for fifth.

Matsuda, who had beforehand damaged 2:21 in her win on the 2022 Osaka Worldwide Ladies’s Marathon, took 10 seconds off her time in that race for an all-time Japanese #8 2:20:42 for sixth. Having floated retirement after lacking the Paris crew, it was an important payoff for Matsuda’s determination to present it yet another go. Hosoda’s 2:20 was a significant breakthrough, however as her fifth time going beneath 2:22 Matsuda’s efficiency solidified her place as one among Japan’s finest ever.

After a 2:06:53 debut for seventh in Osaka final 12 months the Toshinari Takaoka-coached Yohei Ikeda (Kao) was despatched to the Asian Video games as an alternative of being named to the Budapest World Championships crew. In Berlin he, Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) and Yuhei Urano (Fujitsu) went out collectively on 2:05:45 tempo with one other group together with Kento Kikutani (Toyota Boshoku) and Hideyuki Tanaka (Toyota) a brief distance again.

Ikeda accelerated to NR tempo after 10 km, hitting midway in 1:02:25, leaving Tamura and Urano to drop again to the next group at 1:02:35. At 30 km Ikeda was on 2:05:06 tempo, Tamura, Urano and Tanaka all useless on 2:06-flat tempo. By 40 km Ikeda had jumped as much as seventh total, and with a robust final kick overtook Ethiopian Tadese Takele proper earlier than the end to take sixth in 2:05:12, the 2nd-fastest time ever by a Japanese man and solely 16 seconds off the NR.

Tamura was subsequent at nineteenth in a PB 2:07:38, one other massive step by one of many extra fascinating folks in Japanese athletics. Urano blew up exhausting, dropping to forty sixth in 2:16:27 after being overtaken by Kikutani, thirtieth in 2:11:17, Tanaka, thirty first in 2:11:21, and newbie Yuji Shibukawa (Gunma United AC), who wasn’t far off his 2:15:40 finest from Tokyo this 12 months with a 2:16:26 for forty fifth to edge Urano on the line.