The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Kawano takes silver by sliver in 35-km walk
EUGENE, Ore. — For the last two kilometers of what had evolved into a two-man duel, Japan’s Masatora Kawano never let Italy’s Massimo Stano pull away, staying rmly on his heels and matching him stride for stride. But he never managed to pass him, either.
In the end, Kawano came up one-second short and had to settle for the silver medal in the inaugural men’s 35-kilometer race walk on the nal day of the World Athletics Championships on Sunday in Eugene, Ore.
Kawano clocked 2 hours 23 minutes 15 seconds to nish one tick behind the Stano, the 20-kilometer gold medalist at last year’s Tokyo Olympics.
Kawano, who collapsed to the ground a er passing the nish line, did not hide his disappointment, punching the pavement with his st. A sympathetic Stano came over and helped Kawano to his feet, and the two hugged each other in a sign of mutual respect. Kawano was smiling as he held up a Japanese ag for the photographers.
Kawano’s silver was the third medal won by Japan in the race walks — the nation went 1-2 in the men’s 20-kilometer race — and was the fourth overall.
“I’m really happy,” said Kawano, who vowed to be ready for a rematch with the Italian. “Stano was a little better than I was. But I’m not going rest on the laurels of winning a silver. I’ll be prepared for next year’s world championships [in Budapest] and the 2024 Paris Olympics.”
e 35-kilometer race replaced the 50-kilometer on the program this year. Kawano had nished sixth in the 50-km at the Tokyo Olympics, which was competed in the scorching heat of Sapporo. He had collapsed at one point and vomited, but he never gave up and went on to nish the race.
He said the physical and mental toll from the race stayed with him for a while. “I had internal organ fatigue, I had muscle fatigue,” Kawano recalled. “ere was a time that I was not able to train like I wanted to.” He also su ered from a serious case of anemia in January.
“It took time for him to recover mentally and physically,” said Toyo University coach Mizuho Sakai, who remained as Kawano’s coach a er he joined the Asahi Kasei corporate team.
To prepare for the shorter 35-kilometer distance, Kawano focused more on building speed with relatively short-distance workouts, at one point not doing any long-distance walks. He also put an e ort into maintaining good nutrition, cooking all of his own meals to overcome his anemia.
2 JAPAN RECORDS FALL
Two Japanese national records fell on the nal day of the World Athletics Championships, with Mako Fukube claiming the mark in the women’s 100-meter hurdles and the men’s 4x400 relay team rewriting the record in that event on Sunday in Eugene, Ore.
Fukube clocked 12.82 seconds in placing eighth in her semi nal heat, which wasn’t good enough to make the
nal but did eclipse the Japan record of 12.86 set by Masumi Aoki in April in Niigata.
Fukube, who defeated Aoki at this year’s Japan championships, was helped by being in a fast race that saw Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan run to a world record of 12.12.
Aoki had a chance to regain the record in the second of the three semi nals, but hit a hurdle midway through the race and nished in sixth place in 13.04.
In the preliminary round Saturday, Fukube broke 13 seconds for the rst time when she clocked 12.96 to qualify for the semi nals, making her just the third Japanese in history to achieve that feat a er Aoki and Asuka Terada.
In the 4x400 relay, the Japanese squad anchored by Yuki Joseph Nakajima became the nation’s rst to eclipse the 3-minute mark, clocking 2:59.51, although it proved to be little consolation for coming up just short of a medal.
e quartet, which included Fuga Sato, Kaito Kawabata and Julian Walsh,
nished in fourth place, 0.79 seconds behind third-place Belgium. e United States won the gold, followed by Jamaica in second.
Kawabata was a member of the relay team at the Tokyo Olympics that had tied the previous record of 3:00.76, which had been set at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Aoki will still return to Japan as a record-holder. She was a member of the women’s 4x100 relay squad that set the national mark of 43.33 in the qualifying heats on July 22. e team did not make the nal. (July 26)