26 sub-2:08 Japanese Men for OLY trials marathon. What's up USA?

Track and field wise they put all their eggs in one basket and race the marathon and little interest in other events. If the US did this they'd have more 208 guys but everyone messes around with shorter races before "moving up" when their speed is shot.

Culture is a big reason too, look at the Japanese , they value focus and discipline. The American culture is much the opposite besides a small %.

^^ This. Credit to Japan for a bunch of pretty good marathoners. But none are on the medal stands at the majors or the Olympics. Jen e tics a bad word here, but seems like they've maxed out on the effort. Can't seem to beat the world in the same way East Africans do.

I worked with a Japanese guy who ran in the mid 2:30s. I asked him how he got into running, and he said baseball. Baseball teams run a huge amount during their training in Japan, and because of that he found he had a decent talent in running post high school. Obviously not a sub 2:10 guy, but interesting nonetheless.

All true, but there IS a genetic attribute in Japanese men that makes the marathon an ideal event to assure a high likelihood of success if the proper work is put in. They are more genetically built for marathon than for the high jump or basketball. If they were "all in" for those events, do you honestly believe they wound be highly competitive on the world stage? Of course not. They are aligning culturally to their inherent genetic strengths.

Lol. Japanese men are not "highly competitive" on the world marathon stage either. See above.

Being in the top 3-6 countries in the world is a reasonable definition of highly competitive.

en.wikipedia.org

Marathons at the World Athletics Championships

The marathon at the World Championships in Athletics has been contested by both men and women since the inaugural edition in 1983. It is the second most prestigious global title in the discipline after the marathon at the Oly...

Open link

Wrong!

Hahahahaha, you seriously think this makes your point??? LOL. This is list is dominated by East African flags. Plus, everyone knows the World Championship marathon is a joke. Olympics and the big majors with big paydays are the marathons that matter. Japan has no Olympic gold medalists since 1936, well before East Africans showed up on the scene. They have a bronze in 1964 and silvers in '68 and '92. Show us the list of top three finishes at Berlin, New York, Boston, Rotterdam, Chicago for the last 40 years and compare to East Africans (Grassrunner shows Fukuoka instead, lol).

It would be like if a country had a whole bunch of 3:33/3:34 1500 runners, but no one who could break 3:30. Cool story and all, but not world beaters. And we all accept that the Japanese work very hard and are very dedicated. But something... something... keeps them from running 2:03 marathons.

Something keeps everyone other than East Africans from running 2:03 marathons but no non East African country gets as many people close to that time as Japan. It does seem that Japan should have more big games marathon medals than they do. A couple years back I looked at Olympic marathon results in my lifetime, so back to Helsinki, and found that the US men have actually won one more medal than Japan has in that time frame. I should double check this but am not going to right now.

I have wondered if maybe the popularity of marathon gets in Japan as a spectator sport is something of a handicap to their performances in major international races because there's such an emphasis on domestic races that their runners don't as much experience in major international marathons as they need to do as well at championship races as their domestic performances suggest they should.

Exactly. Take the East Africans out of the equation and tell me who it is, exactly who is dominating Japan on the all-time performances list? That's right - nobody.

Here is one example. 20+ years ago Jeff Schiebler finished up at his Canadian university having won a bunch of Canadian titles. Excellent, world class runner (7:43, 13:13, 27:36, 1:01:28), he took his talents to Japan. He made "a six-figure US salary," to run for a Japanese corporate team. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, this was a staggering amount of money.

The companies are wide-ranging: Japan Rail, Konica Minolta, Honda, Subaru, you get the idea. Having lived in Japan myself, the whole country grinds to a halt during the big ekiden races-it's a huge deal.

cbc.ca

B.C.'s Schiebler a distance-running superstar in Japan | CBC Sports

Open link

The Japanese training system is very militant with dictatorial coaches and a high prevalence of bullying among athletes (similar to their schools and workplaces). If you do not perform, you have to basically be a janitor and slave for everyone else. It does wonders for motivation!

There is also the sheer popularity of marathons in Japan. There's a lot of fish in the sea and just jogging out a 5 hour marathon is not really a thing there (except for very elderly people where 5 hours would be good for their age group). You always try your best and hardest otherwise you don't show up and let someone else take your place who will try harder. People get really excited about 3 hours marathons in North America whereas that would get you sweeped off the course of some marathons in Japan! Talk about embarrassing!

Pretty interesting comparing the all time list of US vs Japan. I went to the World Athletics website and looked at the two countries' lists, even accounting for all conditions (since many top Americans have PRs from Boston).

The 10th fastest American is Alberto Salazar at 2:08:51. There are 107 Japanese men who have run faster.

2022 World Championships
Top F: 9th, Top M: 12th

2021 Olympic Games
Top F: 8th, Top M: 6th

2019 World Championships
Top F: 7th, Top M: 25th

2017 World Championships
Top F: 16th, Top M: 9th (and 10th)

2016 Olympic Games
Top F: 14th, Top M: 16th

Six top-10 finishers since Rio. No countries have the pedigree of Ethiopia and Kenya in this event, but for a nation with fewer people than Ethiopia, I would argue Japan has been punching above their weight class in global championships.

What might be interesting: where did most of the fast Japanese performances take place? If I had to guess I would say they were domestic races. Fast Japanese men in particular tend to go to major championships overseas and underwhelm. I seem to recall Japanese women tend to do better by this metric, but I have not checked the data and could be entirely full of it.

The Japanese are nuts about long-distance relays.

Back in the feudal period, when they didn't have horses, they had a sort of pony express where the daimyo's letter would be carried 42km by a runner who handed it off to another runner for the next 42km and so forth. It was pretty quick. Fastest mail system outside east Africa at the time.

That would be sweet! Work at a "Running Company" and maybe get sponsored by a "Distance Project". That's the dream, bro.

Japan has a higher population than Ethiopia. A three second search would have shown you that. If you wanted to be smart about it though, you'd point out that Ethiopia has a much high number of people under age 30 than Japan due to birthrates.

To put a bow on it, Japan has a high number of very good marathoners. But no world beaters. In the most recent 100 big marathons (Olympics and majors), how many have been won by a Japanese runner?