Yoshihide Kiryu and Aska Cambridge in the 100m at the Seiko Grand Prix in Tokyo (© Getty Images)
National record-holders and major championship medallists are among the top Japanese athletes confirmed to take part in the Ready Steady Tokyo Athletics meeting – part of the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold series – in the Japanese capital on 9 May.
Several members of Japan’s medal-winning 4x100m teams from the 2016 Olympics and 2019 World Championships will compete in the men’s sprints. Yoshihide Kiryu, Yuki Koike, Aska Cambridge and Shuhei Tada will line up for the 100m, while Shota Iizuka and Kirara Shiraishi are confirmed for the 200m.
Shotaro Shiroyama, who in 2019 set a national long jump record of 8.40m, will take on world U20 champion Yuki Hashioka and national champion Hibiki Tsuha.
Nozomi Tanaka, another world U20 champion, will line up for the 1500m, an event in which she set a national record last year.
Hitomi Niiya, who has set Japanese records for 10,000m and the half marathon in recent years, will be stepping down in distance to the 5000m where she’ll take on rising star Ririka Hironaka. In the men’s event, national champion Yuta Bando lines up alongside promising teenagers Yamato Yoshii and Kosuke Ishida.
Naoto Tobe, Tomohiro Shinno and Takashi Eto – all 2.30m+ jumpers at their best – form part of the high jump field. Meanwhile, national record-holders Shunya Takayama and Asuka Terada lead the sprint hurdles line-ups.
And in the javelin, Ryohei Arai and Genki Dean will continue their domestic rivalry.
Organisers for World Athletics
