Japanese 2009 World Championships Marathon Team Announced

May 7, 2009

Following Kenya, Japan is the second big marathon nation to announce its team for the IAAF Worl Championships 2009 in Berlin.

At a press conference on May 7th, Japan’s athletics federation Rikuren announced the official lineups for both men and women. The federation, its athletes and the country are determined to make up for the national team’s disappointing showing of last summer’s Olympic games. Both the men’s and women’s teams include a fair number of young athletes, with two of the men and all but one of the women having debuted within the last two years and three runners total having qualified for the World Championships team in their debut marathons.

Men:
Atsushi Sato, Satoshi Irifune, Arata Fujiwara, Masaya Shimizu, Kazuhiro Maeda

Women:
Yoshimi Ozaki, Yoko Shibui, Yuri Kano, Yukiko Akaba, Yoshiko Fujinaga

Reserves:

Men:
Kensuke Takahashi

Women:
Tomo Morimoto