Live Now: Official Marathon Grand Championships Live Discussion Thread

Osako and Yuki battling for 3rd place

Osako closing on 2nd place

This is a heartbreaker.

What a race !

Damn. 4th for Yuki. Forever got my respect. I hate the terms "Balls" and "Pussy" but don't know what else to say other than "BALLS OF STEEL."

Naoki Koyama wins, Akira Akasaki 2nd = Paris Team

Osako 3rd again, will have to wait, 2:05:50 or better by someone winter or spring will knock him off, but he could race for that too

Excellent women's race in progress.

Yuka Suzuki wins, Mao Ichiyama in 2nd and onto 2nd strait Olympic team.

Ai Hosoda 3rd. 2:21:40 is the women's time to beat to replace Hosoda on the team

Was trying to find a recap on youtube but nothing yet, NHK had a nice summary of the women at the end but missed the men

However there are some amateur clips midway in the race and WOW that was some crazy rain

Definitely huge vibes of Boston 2018, very intense weather

The only problem with that of course is Paris 2024 will be completely different environment but as far as "toughness" they definitely have their picks

and of course the third slot can be replaced at any time, probably will

I get the impression that there is no love lost for Yuki Kawauchi by Brett Larner from Japan Running News (which is an excellent and informative blog BTW). Yuki gets hardly any coverage on JRN these days and was described in his race report as "a lone runner from Saitama setting off at an unsustainable pace" although he did mention his name a couple of times later in the report. On X (ex-twitter) he was described as the frontrunner, without being named. There was a time on JRN when Yuki Kawauchi got lots of coverage. I can only assume there was a falling out of some sort - out of curiosity does anyone know any details??

Brett Larner unfortunately likes to push his own agenda in his reporting (he for example also hates Nozomi Tanaka for whatever reason), so yes, he avoids mentioning Yuki's name for some time now, basically since Yuki turned pro. I don't know about the exact reasons as well, but back when Yuki was an amateur runner Brett used to be something like his de facto agent, often traveling with him and translating his words to the media (as you mentioned, back then Yuki also got a lot of coverage on JRN with articles like the Kawuachi counter). Yuki apparently ditched Brett when he turned pro and Brett appears so be extremly mad about this fact ever since.

13 minute recap video of the men (including very obvious Yuki lol!)