Skip to main content

World Championships Women's Marathon - Results

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 Ozaki in 19th.  Akaba and the young Remi Nakazato (Team Daihatsu) remained at the front pack until the Kenyans' big move at 33 km; when things broke apart Nakazato continued on with a group including China's Xiaolin Zhu and Jiali Wang, just cracking the top ten.

When Kenyans Edna Kiplagat, Priscah Jeptoo and Sharon Cherop surged away at 33 km with Ethiopians Aberu Kebede and Bezunesh Bekele in tow Akaba waited, not making her own move until 35 km when she set off in pursuit to try to retake a place in the medals.  After dropping a place to Kenyan-born Isabellah Andersson of Sweden while waiting to start her push Akaba moved up from 7th to 5th, her husband and coach Shuhei Akaba frantically screaming at her through a plastic megaphone from the sidelines to go faster.  Akaba ran the third-fastest split in the field from 35 km to the finish and the second-fastest, just 2 seconds slower than winner Kiplagat, from 40 km to the end, but her move came too late for her to close the gap to Cherop and Bekele.  Her tactical error in sticking to script and not responding to the move when it happened, on relying on gaman over racing sense, cost her a bronze medal; only 21 seconds from 3rd place and closing, even a marginally stronger effort to respond to the Kenyans between 33 and 35 km may have been enough for Akaba to close it.

The Japanese women also finished just seconds out of the medals in the team scoring, 4th behind Ethiopia by 38 seconds due in large part to Ozaki's disappointing performance.  China was a surprise silver, the Kenyans taking gold in a perfect sweep.

2011 World Championships Women's Marathon
Daegu, Korea, 8/27/11
click here for complete results

1. Edna Kiplagat (Kenya) - 2:28:43
2. Priscah Jeptoo (Kenya) - 2:29:00
3. Sharon Cherop (Kenya) - 2:29:14
4. Bezunesh Bekele (Ethiopia) - 2:29:21
5. Yukiko Akaba (Team Hokuren) - 2:29:35
6. Xiaolin Zhu (China) - 2:29:58
7. Isabellah Andersson (Sweden/Kenya) - 2:30:13
8. Jilai Wang (China) - 2:30:25
9. Marisa Barros (Portugal) - 2:30:29
10. Remi Nakazato (Team Daihatsu) - 2:30:52
-----
18. Yoshimi Ozaki (Team Daiichi Seimei) - 2:32:31
19. Azusa Nojiri (Team Daiichi Seimei) - 2:33:42
22. Mai Ito (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) - 2:35:16

Team Scoring
1. Kenya - 7:26:57
2. China - 7:31:34
3. Ethiopia - 7:32:20
4. Japan - 7:32:58
5. Ukraine - 7:45:44

Comments

Brett Larner said…
Still relevant: http://japanrunningnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/good-enough-mentality-can-never-win.html
yuza said…
The above article is quite apt for Akaba's performance yesterday. I thought she ran really well, but she looked comfortable the whole race and I kept wondering when she was going to make a move; it never came until after the Kenyans had taken off.

Noguchi won in Athens because she made the first move and applied pressure to the rest of the field; there was no pressure yesterday from anybody. I really hope Noguchi can get fit for next year.

Ozaki was a bit disappointing, but something tells me that she was not right for the race. The rest ran honest races, yet I was particularly impressed with Nakazato.

Most-Read This Week

Ninja Runner Yuka Ando Leads Japanese Women's Marathon Team in London: "I Want to Go For It"

Her form has been dubbed "ninja running." Both arms held straight down with almost no movement. That idiosyncratic style carried Yuka Ando , 23, to the fastest-ever marathon debut by a Japanese woman, 2:21:36, at March's Nagoya Women's Marathon to land at #4 on the all-time Japanese lists. All at once Ando found herself catapulted to the top level of women's marathoning, a candidate for Japan's next great marathoner. When she was younger Ando ran moving her arms like other runners, but she had a bad habit of moving robotically, her upper body and lower body not working in sync. The turning point came in 2014 when she joined Suzuki Hamamatsu AC . Working there with coach Masayuki Satouchi to eliminate the faults in her form, the pair arrived at the ninja running style that let her run relaxed. "Other people keep asking me, "Isn't it hard to run like that?" but for me it's comfortable," she said. The efficient form helped her mai

Yamaguchi 10th at United Airlines NYC Half - Weekend Overseas Results

2024 national cross-country champion Tomonori Yamaguchi was the top Japanese finisher in the men's race at the United Airlines NYC Half , taking 10th in 1:04:36. A 2nd-year at Waseda University , Yamaguchi was one of three collegiate runners running New York in the 11th year of JRN's development program collaboration between the Ageo City Half Marathon and the New York Road Runners, a program that has seen people like future half marathon and marathon NR breaker Yuta Shitara and Paris Olympic team member Akira Akasaki make their international debuts. Yamaguchi's Waseda teammate Taishi Ito started fast, going with the leaders through 5 km in 14:29 before losing touch. Hosei University senior Rei Matsunaga went through in 14:42 in his last race before joining the JR Higashi Nihon corporate team in April. Yamaguchi, who caught COVID after winning last month's National Cross-Country Championships, started more conservatively with a 15:11 first 5km. But where both Ito

Rui Aoki Wins National University Men's Half Marathon - Weekend Results

Yuka Ando 's win at the Nagoya Women's Marathon was the big news of the weekend, but there were other high-level races happening, even in Nagoya. Held in parallel with the marathon, the Nagoya City Half Marathon saw Australians Natalie Rule and Ed Goddard take easy wins by about 2.5 minutes each, Rule in 1:13:57 and Goddard in 1:04:01. The new Biwako Marathon also had a non-Japanese winner, China's Yousheng Guan scoring 1st in 2:14:58 with Japan's Hirohito Sugai next in 2:16:40. Mikiko Ota won the women's race in 2:50:44. The Shizuoka Marathon returned for its first running in five years, with club runner Shumpei Oda leading the top 7 men under 2:20 in 2:15:36. Women's winner Remi Tanaka ran 2:41:23, beating runner-up Ayumi Sano by exactly 7 minutes. And in Tokyo, Rui Aoki continued what has been a great season so far for Koku Gakuin University with a win at the National University Men's Half Marathon . Aoki and Hiro Konda of Chuo Gakuin Unive