Athletics: Tokyo at a standstill for new-look marathon

TOKYO, Feb 18, 2007 (AFP) - Downtown Tokyo's normally clogged main arteries were free of vehicles on Sunday as 30,000 top athletes and amateur runners alike raced on a brand new marathon course under chilly winter rain.

Major roads were cleared for up to seven hours to make way for the runners, who successfully obtained marathon tickets from about 95,000 applicants.

More than 10,000 volunteers assisted with the event on its new downtown course, which Tokyo hopes to showcase next year as the capital bids for the 2016 summer Olympic Games.

"I think it was a success. I am glad we did it," said Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara.

"I hope to make it more wonderful and a new tradition of Tokyo," he said.

The Tokyo metropolitan government hopes the event will grow in prestige to rival marathon events in major cities like New York and Berlin.

The Tokyo marathon originated in 1981 and was run on a different route until last year.

Organisers, including the Tokyo metropolitan government, changed the eligibility criteria this year, opening the race to the general public.

They gave the course a makeover to take it past Tokyo's best sights.

It started at the Tokyo metropolitan government building, in Shinjuku business area, and wound its way past some of the city's major tourist sites.

Runners raced alongside the moat of the Imperial Palace and between upscale fashion boutiques and department stores in the Ginza shopping area.

They also went by temples and old buildings of the Asakusa historical district before finishing at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition centre, near Tokyo bay.

Previously, only men competed in the event, but this year women also took part, including Barcelona and Atlanta Olympic medalist Yuko Arimori, who chose the event to finish her marathon career.

Many physically challenged sports fans took to wheelchairs for the event. Visually impaired runners and organ transplant recipients also participated.

About 5,000 police and 1,600 paramedics and rescue workers were on standby.

Two men in their late 50s collapsed due to cardiac arrest, with 14 others transported to hospital for minor injuries, emergency workers said.

One of the collapsed men, a 59-year-old, remained unconscious at a Tokyo hospital. The other, a 58-year-old, regained consciousness and was not in a life-threatening condition, said a spokesman at the Tokyo Fire Department.

Conditions were less than perfect for the race, with windy rain and temperatures hovering around five degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit).

"It would be better to have it in a better season," Ishihara said. "But that's difficult because other city marathons are scheduled back-to-back."

Japanese-based Kenyan runner Daniel Njenga finished first in two hours, nine minutes and 45 seconds.

Japan's Tomoyuki Sato came in second in 2:11:22, but failed to make the 2:09:30 cut needed to qualify for the world championships at Osaka in August.

His compatriot, Satoshi Irifune, who was fourth in the Doha Asian Games in December, finished third in 2:12:44, while Athens Olympic bronze medalist Vanderlei De Lima finished sixth in 2:16:08.

Minister raises question about Tokyo Marathon
2 March 2010
Kyodo News

TOKYO, March 2 -- Hiroshi Nakai, state minister in charge of disaster prevention, on Tuesday questioned the prudence of proceeding with Sunday's Tokyo Marathon despite the issuing of a tsunami warning for the capital following an earthquake in Chile.

Nakai said staging the marathon, which was contested by about 35,000 runners, could have undermined the reliability of warnings by the Japan Meteorological Agency after the magnitude-8.8. quake in central Chile put wide areas of the Pacific Rim on high alert for tsunamis.

''If warnings prove meaningless, people could think next time that a similar warning may not be reliable,'' Nakai said.

''People (at the Tokyo metropolitan government) in charge of the marathon told media that they decided to hold the races because waves of more than 1 meter would not come, but there were forecasts in issuing the warning that (waves) over 1 meter might be possible,'' he said.

Michiharu Hayasaki, deputy chief organizer for the Tokyo Marathon, countered that the organizing committee judged the event safe because it was extremely unlikely the course would be affected by any tidal waves anticipated for Sunday.

''The forecast for Tokyo Bay was for 1-meter-high waves, and the location of the finish line was 6 meters above sea level,'' Hayasaki said. ''And we continued to collect tsunami information consistently during the races to deal with possible contingencies.''

On Sunday morning, the weather agency issued tsunami warnings covering prefectures on the Pacific side of the country's archipelagoes, which were downgraded to advisories by early Monday morning.

A senior agency official said Monday that its forecast ''might have been excessive'' but added that the warning was issued on the basis of the worst-case scenario envisaged by the agency after analyzing data from past tsunamis.

N.Y. official: Tokyo Marathon on right path
3 March 2010
Daily Yomiuri

Last Sunday marked just the fourth running of the Tokyo Marathon. But one expert said the race has already earned its place among the top marathons of the world.

"Our first impression from the first day is that this is a major, major event," said Richard Finn, director of media relations and sports strategy for the New York Road Runners Club, which stages the New York City Marathon.

Finn, speaking in Tokyo last weekend, said Tokyo officials had approached his organization years ago about the logistics of setting up a mass participation race, eventually to start in 2007 and replace the elite men's and women's races in the city.

"I told them, 'Tip your toe in the water first and have maybe 10,000 runners,'" Finn said. "They dropped all the way in."

Starting with 20,000 entrants that first year, the field was expanded to 32,000 for this year's edition, drawn from over 272,000 applicants.

"This is certainly a measure of success," Finn said.

Asked to be more specific of what makes for a successful marathon, Finn outlined the criteria he uses and which Tokyo has cleared.

In addition to the large turnout, Finn said marathons need the cooperation and support of city officials, a high-caliber field for the professionals and wide coverage from the media.

But everything, he said, starts with getting the city on board.

"Every major big city marathon must have that cooperation because we're obviously running on their streets," he said. "It's not like we own our own stadium."

Finn pointed out that the New York City Marathon, held in November, has so weaved itself into the fabric of the city that even the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 could not derail it.

In fact, as the first major sporting event in the city after the disaster, it served as a means of getting the city back on its feet, both physically and psychologically.

"We've been very fortunate that whoever the mayor has been, he has seen the benefit to the well-being of the city of the marathon," Finn said.

Finn said the New York race, with a field of 43,000 and runners from around the world, gives the city's economy a 225 million dollars boost--numbers that any politician can appreciate.

Finn said the Tokyo Marathon also passed the test of drawing a high-level field of top-class runners, helped by 17.25 million yen in prize money, not including bonuses for records. The winning men and women received 8 million yen each.

"The Tokyo Marathon is one of the top prizes in our sport, not only in terms of prize money, but in terms of prestige and importance," Finn said.

While the Tokyo race has been elevated by the IAAF, the sport's world governing body, to the highest status of Gold Label--putting it on par with New York City and London--it is uncertain when and if it will be included in the lucrative World Marathon Majors series.

The WMM consists of New York, Chicago, Boston, London and Berlin, plus the world championship and Olympic races, offering 500,000 dollars annually to the top male and female athletes earning points in those races over a two-year cycle.

"It has brought some structure to our sport on a pro level that it didn't have," Finn said.

Expansion of the series, changes in the scoring system and finding a title sponsor are among issues that planned to be addressed.

One place where New York differs from other races is that it has done away with the use of pacesetters, employed to obstensibly assure a fast winning time.

"We want our race to begin right from the very first mile," Finn said. "We want it to be a complete test of the professional runner."

As shown last Sunday in Tokyo, the investment does not always pay off. With a frigid rain not helping matters, the winning time was more than two minutes slower than the previous worst.

But when it comes to its place among the top marathons, Tokyo is right in step.