We have been busy the previous few days working with the Mongolian marathon group on the Paris Olympics. Catching up on the Japanese nationwide group’s performances during the last 3 days of athletics competitors, the large information was in fact world champion Haruka Kitaguchi scoring Japan’s first and solely medal in Paris, gold within the javelin on her first throw. Within the closing night session on Saturday Kitaguchi got here out swinging with a season finest 65.80 m first throw that left the remainder of the sector preventing for silver. South African Jo-Ane Van Dyk got here closest to Kitaguchi’s mark at 63.93 m, simply holding off Czech Nikola Ogrodnikova for silver by 25 cm. Japan’s different javelin finalist Momone Ueda was tenth with a season finest 61.64 m throw.
One in all Japan’s different medal hopes, the lads’s 4×100 m group of Ryuichiro Sakai, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, Yoshihide Kiryu and Koki Ueyama ran a season finest 37.78, however that was solely ok for Fifth. Sakai was a swap for Hiroki Yanagita who wasn’t in peak type within the heats, and Sani Brown was switched to 2nd after main his opening leg within the heats. However after disappointment on the Tokyo Olympics this was solely 0.17 out of bronze, a step again in the best path.
Extra unexpectedly, Ryoichi Akamatsu cleared a PB 2.31 m within the males’s excessive soar to take Fifth, the very best Japanese males’s excessive soar efficiency on the Olympics in 88 years. Bronze took 2.34 m, simply out of vary, however you possibly can’t fault a PB in an Olympic closing.
The boys’s 4×400 m relay group of Yuki Joseph Nakajima, Kaito Kawabata, Fuga Sato and Kentaro Sato ran a 2:59.48 NR of their qualifying warmth on Friday, however that solely received them via to the ultimate on a time qualifier after they completed 4th of their warmth. It was fairly apparent Saturday’s closing was going to be large throughout the board, and it did not disappoint. In a race the place the highest 6 of the 9 groups ran Olympic, space or nationwide information, Japan ran an Asian document of two:58.33 however solely took Sixth almost 4 seconds behind the U.S.A. group. It was unimaginable to see dwell.
The ladies’s 10000 m closing on Friday noticed women-only half marathon NR holder Rino Goshima take the lead, unintentionally on this case when Eritrean Rahel Daniel abruptly dropped out. In a race the place the highest 11 ran beneath 31 minutes Goshima ended up 18th in 31:29.48, Haruka Kokai coming via subsequent in 31:44.03 for nineteenth and Yuka Takashima twenty second of 23 finishers in 31:52.07.
Girls’s 100 mH NR holder Mako Fukube and Yumi Tanaka each made the semifinals however got here up wanting qualifying for the ultimate. Fukube was Fifth in SF3 in 12.89 (-0.7) and Tanaka 12.91 (+0.5) for seventh in Warmth 1 after making it via the repechage spherical.
Which brings us to the marathons. With each the lads’s race on Saturday and the ladies’s race on Sunday bringing new Olympic information, large destructive splits and a number of PBs, Japan had its finest total group efficiency in a protracted, very long time. JRN’s darkish horse decide to make the Paris group eventually fall’s Olympic trials though he’d by no means damaged 2:09, Akira Akasaki went proper up in it after the flattish first 15 km, placing himself into the highest 10 on the primary climb and transferring up into the highest 5 the place he stayed the remainder of the way in which.
When the lead pack broke up with Tamirat Tola‘s transfer within the hills Akasaki was a part of the quartet that got here again collectively to race for silver, however within the final 5 km he dropped out of medal competition. Fifth place seemed like the place he was going to finish up, perhaps 4th, however though he closed to inside 1 second of Deresa Geleta each of them had been run down by Emile Cairess within the closing meters. Tola broke Samuel Wanjiru‘s Olympic document with a 2:06:26 for gold, Belgian Bashir Abdi taking silver in 2:06:47 and Benson Kipruto bronze in 2:07:00. Cairess’ closing pace took him to 4th in 2:07:29, Geleta Fifth in 2:07:31 and Akasaki Sixth in 2:07:32, his first time breaking 2:09 and the fastest-ever by a Japanese man on the Olympics.
5000 m NR holder Suguru Osako was by no means actually an element, hanging close to the again of the lead group with out exerting himself after which dropping off to thirteenth in 2:09:25. Olympic trials winner Naoki Koyama ran because the main Japanese man via the primary 15 km earlier than fading to twenty third in 2:10:33, however together with Osako they had been nonetheless two of the fastest-ever Japanese males’s Olympic performances.
Temperatures had been hotter for the ladies’s marathon on Sunday, however Japan’s medal hopes there went on ice when the JAAF introduced proper after the lads’s marathon that ladies’s NR holder Honami Maeda was out with a stress fracture in her proper thigh. Maeda was the whole bundle, 2:18:59 with an incredibly aggressive 2nd half, confirmed on hills, confirmed in warmth, and so forth. It fell to Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki ;and sub-2:21 runner Mao Ichiyama to choose up the slack.
Ichiyama was by no means within the high 35 and fell so far as 61st at 25 km earlier than rallying a bit on the downhills and flatter final 10 km, in the end ending 51st in 2:34:13. In heavy rain Suzuki had run a 2:24:09 PB to win the Olympic trials, and right here she ran the identical form of race, staying close to the entrance however not likely pushing till it counted. On the powerful down-up-down part between 25 and 30 km she went into the highest 10, and when issues received actual on the large downhill proper after that it was high 5, identical to Akasaki. She held on so long as she may, however when Sifan Hassan handed her to hammer the leaders for gold she dropped to Sixth.
In an unimaginable dash end Hassan broke Tiki Gelana‘s Olympic document with a 2:22:55 for the win over silver medalist Tigst Assefa by 3 seconds regardless of issues getting bodily between them on the winding part proper earlier than the house straight. Hellen Obiri was third in a PB of two:23:10 simply 4 seconds forward of 4th-placer Sharon Lokedi. Like Akasaki, Suzuki missed Fifth by seconds, Amane Beriso Shankule getting there first in 2:23:57 and Suzuki subsequent in 2:24:02, a PB within the greatest of races, the 2nd-fastest Japanese girls’s Olympic marathon time behind Naoko Takahashi‘s gold in Sydney 2000 and finest inserting since Noguchi’s 2004 gold. It is unusual that there are such a lot of parallels between how Suzuki and Akasaki ran, each up in competition when it counted, each destructive splitting their technique to PBs, and each simply lacking out on Fifth. Good on them. As 1985 Berlin Marathon winner Jimmy Ashworth advised JRN post-race, “You possibly can’t ask for greater than that.”
Kitaguchi’s javelin gold was Japan’s solely medal in athletics and street racing, a skinny haul in an Olympics that noticed the Japanese nationwide group as an entire rating its best-ever gold medal rely throughout all sports activities, 20, and end third within the medal standings. Kitaguchi apart, Japan had three Fifth-placers, three Sixth-placers, one seventh and three eighth. That is not nothing, nevertheless it’s nonetheless less than Japan’s degree in a number of different sports activities. The marathons had been good this time round, however race strolling and the 4×100 m had been down in power and center distance stays a clean. Possibly the very best of the following era, Rin Kubo, Ko Ochiai, Keita Sato and some others, will do one thing about that by the point Los Angeles rolls round in 4 years. We’ll get a have a look at that in Tokyo subsequent 12 months.
