Skip to main content

Odawara City Employee Facing Penalties After Winning Local Road Race as Friend's "Double"

http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0326/TKY201303260439.html

translated by Brett Larner

City officials in Odawara, Kanagawa announced on Mar. 26 that the 22-year-old male winner of a local road race held in Odawara on Mar. 10 has been stripped of his title after it was discovered that his friend, a 23-year-old Odawara city employee and former high school track teammate, had run in his place.  The officials said that the 23-year-old city worker will face penalties for running as a "double."

According to municipal officials, the actions in question took place at the city-organized 2000-runner Sontoku Road Race in the men's under-29 10 km division.  Just before the start of the race the 22-year-old experienced pain in one of his thighs and decided not to run.  His 23-year-old friend said, "I'll run instead," and ran wearing the 22-year-old's bib number.  The 22-year-old, who won the race last year, told him, "OK, but only as long as you don't make the podium."

After the 23-year-old won the race the 22-year-old took part in the award ceremony and received prizes.  The city's athletics bureau discovered the switch after a phone call alerted them that a "double" had actually won.  A city official commented, "The two of them did this on the spur of the moment without really thinking it through.  They have been very apologetic about it."

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Japan's Olympic Marathon Team Meets the Press

With renewed confidence, Japan's Olympic marathon team will face the total 438 m elevation difference hills of Paris this summer. The members of the women's and men's marathon teams for August's Paris Olympics appeared at a press conference in Tokyo on Mar. 25 in conjunction with the Japan Marathon Championship Series III (JMC) awards gala. Women's Olympic trials winner Yuka Suzuki (Daiichi Seimei) said she was riding a wave of motivation in the wake of the new women's national record. When she watched Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) set the record at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon on TV, Suzuki said she was, "absolutely stunned." Her coach Sachiko Yamashita told her afterward, "When someone breaks the NR, things change," and Suzuki found herself saying, "I want to take my shot." After training for a great run in Paris, she said, "I definitely want to break the NR in one of my marathons after that." Mao

Weekend Racing Roundup

  China saw a new men's national record of 2:06:57 from  Jie He  at the Wuxi Marathon Sunday, but in Japan it was a relatively quiet weekend with mostly cold and rainy amateur-level marathons across the country. At the Tokushima Marathon , club runner Yuhi Yamashita  won the men's race by almost 4 1/2 minutes in 2:17:02, the fastest Japanese men's time of the weekend, but oddly took 22 seconds to get across the starting line. The women's race saw a close finish between the top two, with Shiho Iwane  winning in 2:49:33 over Ayaka Furukawa , 2nd in 2:49:46.  At the 41st edition of the Sakura Marathon in Chiba, Yukie Matsumura  (Comodi Iida) ran the fastest Japanese women's time of the weekend, 2:42:45, to take the win. Club runner Yuki Kuroda  won the men's race in 2:20:08.  Chika Yokota  won the Saga Sakura Marathon women's race in 2:49:33.  Yuki Yamada  won the men's race in 2:21:47 after taking the lead in the final 2 km.  Naoki Inoue  won the 16th r

Sprinter Shoji Tomihisa Retires From Athletics at 105

A retirement ceremony for local masters track and field legend Shoji Tomihisa , 105, was held May 13 at his usual training ground at Miyoshi Sports Park Field in Miyoshi, Hiroshima. Tomihisa began competing in athletics at age 97, setting a Japanese national record 16.98 for 60 m in the men's 100~104 age group at the 2017 Chugoku Masters Track and Field meet. Last year Tomihisa was the oldest person in Hiroshima selected to run as a torchbearer in the Tokyo Olympics torch relay. Due to the coronavirus pandemic the relay on public roads was canceled, and while he did take part in related ceremonies his run was ultimately canceled. Tomihisa recently took up the shot put, but in light of his fading physical strength he made the decision to retire from competition. Around 30 members of the Shoji Tomihisa Booster Club attended the retirement ceremony. After receiving a bouquet of flowers from them Tomihisa in turn gave them a colored paper placard on which he had written the characters