This weekend's Osaka International Women's Marathon will go ahead despide omicron wave

Despite Osaka being named to a preliminary state of emergency as Japan goes deeper into its omicron wave, this weekend's Osaka International Women's Marathon and Osaka Half Marathon are going ahead on their traditional public road courses. Osaka Women's is Japan's last remaining purely elite marathon, and with the mass-participation Osaka Marathon moving to the last weekend of February this year and targeting WA platinum label status the writing has to be on the wall for its future.

It just doesn't seem sustainable to have this race four weeks before the start of a three-week run of platinum label races, one in the same city, one in Tokyo and one in Nagoya.

But for this year, at least, Osaka Women's clearly has the support up top in the local government to keep moving, and that counts for something. Like the 2021 race, despite its name it's a Japanese-only field with male pacers, kind of inevitably on the first point given Japan's ongoing border fortification but a bit regrettably on the second. Take out the "International" and "Women's" and what have you got left?

The win looks almost definitely to be between Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) and Sayaka Sato (Sekisui Kagaku). Matsuda has one of the best records in the sport, with three wins and a 5th-place in Berlin out of five marathon starts, all between 2:21:47 and 2:22:44. The only misfire she's had was a 2:29:51 for 4th in Japan's Olympic marathon trials that left her as alternate. How she would have done if she'd replaced one of the less-than-100% women who ran the Olympics is one of last year's biggest what-ifs. Sato was the 4th-fastest Japanese woman in 2020 and 2021 and set the 25 km NR en route in her marathon debut, a mark that Matsuda broke while winning Nagoya last year. Sato will need a big step up and/or another miss from Matsuda to compete, but it should be a good race.

The supporting cast includes 2019's fastest Japanese woman Reia Iwade (Adidas), and 2021's 3rd and 4th-placers Yukari Abe (Shimamura) and Mao Uesugi (Starts). Osaka Women's factors into the complex algorithms for making the Oregon World Championships team and Paris Olympics marathon trials, and with six other women in the field having run under the 2:27:00 B-standard for qualification for the Olympic trials the race to finish in the 4th-6th place B-standard bracket should be just as good as the one to make the 1st-3rd place A-standard bracket.

Alongside the marathon, the Osaka Half Marathon will also feature two-time Osaka International winner Kayoko Fukushi (Wacoal) in her final race. Fukushi's marathon debut in Osaka in 2008 was possibly the wildest elite-level marathon debut in history, and while she might not have another marathon in her it's great to see her bring her career to a close back where she had one of its most unforgettable highlights. Sub-61 half marathoner Kenta Murayama (Asahi Kasei) leads the men's field in the half in a tune-up for one of the big marathons a month away whose future is still up in the air.

Fuji TV is handling TV broadcasting duties starting at noon Sunday Japan time. Official streaming looks to be through the TVer subscription service, so get your VPNs now. You might have luck with mov3.co too, but use a popup blocker. JRN will also be covering the race on @JRNlive.

posted Saturday January 29th
by Brett Larner