Luck is cast with everything at stake for a country like Japan. Everyone knows the fondness and roots that running has in all Asian culture, one of the fastest and most prolific today. In Japan Ekiden is an event in itself that is part of the university education of young people and competes representing the colors of each university. Hence it is not strange that the level of Japanese runners is very high. Eye to these figures, Japan is the country with third best average time per marathon runner. Only Ethiopia and Kenya beat him, almost nothing. In 2017, only 148 runners managed to lose 2h10 in the marathon. From them, 88 were Kenyans, 35 Ethiopians and 9 were Japanese.
Although it is difficult to try to attack the prestige that the African school has in marathon and half marathon, the truth is that the Asian school follows the steps very closely. The work, effort and suffering capacity of Japanese runners are crossing borders and becoming true references in long distance testing. And this year the Japanese Athletics Federation deserves great recognition and respect for taking on the enormous risk of completely changing its selection system before the Olympic Games in one of the world's most risk-reluctant sites. The reason for this change is none other than to show transparency in the selection of national teams and to get the best national teams with a proven performance when they are at the peak of maximum form.
Sunday September 15
The test will be held tomorrow Sunday, September 15 at 8:50 in the male category and at 9:10 in the female category. The first two classified in each of the two categories will obtain a place in the Olympic team to participate in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The third classified provisionally obtains a place for the team and the fourth and fifth places would provisionally have a place as alternates.
If a Japanese runner ends up in 2:05:49 or below that mark in the 2019-2020 winter marathons (Fukuoka, Tokyo or Lake Biwa) or if a Japanese runner ends up in 2:22:22 or below in Saitama, Osaka or Nagoya during the 2019-2020 season, he would get third place in the Tokyo 2020 team. In that case, the third classified tomorrow that had provisional place would become the first substitute, while the Tomorrow's fifth place would leave the official team.
Yuta Shitara
The 40 best Japanese marathon runners: 30 men and 10 women
The best Japanese runners of the moment will meet tomorrow from 8:50 in the morning. Of the 30 male runners all have run in less than 2:08:30 or the average of their last two marathons is less than 2:11:00. In addition, 21 athletes have run in less than 2h10 and of them, a total of 6 have done so in less than 2h08. Although Yuki Kawauchi will not be present, it will be Yuta Shitara, winner of the Tokyo marathon in 2018 with a Japanese national record held since 2002. Yuta Shitara ran Tokyo in 2:06:11, five seconds below his country's record and for which he obtained an economic incentive of 1, 18 million dollars through a program called Project Exceed, in the period prior to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, with the aim of breaking national records.
Source link
https://www.planetatriatlon.com/los-30-mejores-maratonistas-japoneses-se-juegan-manana-tres-plazas-tokio-2020/
