Kentaro Sato, Athletics – After 32 Years, Japanese Record Shattered.

Kentaro Sato, Athletics – After 32 Years, Japanese Record Shattered: ‘Star of the 400m’ Soars Globally with Remarkable “Reproduction Skills”

Originally written on 05 FEB 2024

At the Budapest 2023 World Championships in August 2023, the hands of a clock that had stood still for 32 years moved. Kentaro Sato, who competed in the men's 400m preliminaries, clocked 44.77 seconds, 0.01 seconds faster than the 44.78 seconds clocked by Susumu Takano in the 1991 Japan Championships final and the oldest Japanese track record in the event. Sato, who began competing in track and field only after entering high school, uses his lucid mind and his ability to "reproduce" based on experience as his weapons. In his private life, the 29-year-old likes to go stargazing. Japan's "400m star" is looking forward to making further progress on the world stage.

 

Kentaro Sato

Born in Saitama in 1994. Men’s 400m Japanese record holder (44.77 seconds).
He started running at Toyooka High School in Saitama Prefecture, and after graduating from Josai University, he joined Fujitsu.
He competed in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020. He has competed in four World Championships in Athletics since Beijing 2015, where he first competed at age 20.
In July 2023, he won a gold medal at the Asian Championships, recording 45.00 seconds, the second fastest time in Japan’s history. At the Budapest 2023 World Athletics Championships in August, he recorded 44.77 seconds, surpassing the Japanese record of 0.01 seconds, which had not been broken for 32 years.
He is an ace athlete in the Japanese short distance world and expected to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25.

 

At First, Discovering the Rigors of the 400m: “Didn’t Know There Was Such a Tough Event”

 

–How did you get started in athletics?

I started competing when I entered high school, first in the astronomy club. Later, I became a member of the track and field club as a dual club member, and here I am today. At first, I was mainly involved in the astronomy club, but I had played baseball until junior high school and wanted to be physically active, so a classmate from the track club asked me to join the club, saying, “We don’t have enough members and can’t run in the relays, so I want you to join us.”

 

–The 400m is the “longest short distance event”. How did you feel when you started?

My first exposure to 400m was the mile relay (4x400m relay). The high school track team was small, so all of the short distance athletes were required to run both the 4 x 100m relay and the mile relay. So I ran the 400m relay, and at first I was surprised that there was such a tough event (laughs). But we get used to it, so my fear of the 400m has lessened as I have done it more times. The 400m is a long distance and we can make corrections while we are running, so I began to enjoy it and continue to run it.

 

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