1 Japanese High School Coach Has Produced More Current Sub 2:10 Marathoners Than All of the United States

douglas burke wrote:

I go by the top 1000 All Time List's, The 1000th fastest time is 2:10.08

1, Kenya -464

2. Ethiopia -185

3. Japan -101

4. USA-20

5. Morrocco-19

6. Great Britain and Spain -16 each

8. Eritrea and South Africa -14 each

10. Tanzania -13

11. Italy-12

12. Mexico-11

13- France-10

14. Portugal -9

15. Korea and Brazil 8 each

So USA is # 4 in the World in Marathoning.

Sidenote Japan has 95 sub 2:10.00 Marathoners and The Continent of Europe has 99 (Marc Smet is #100 with his 2:10.00

Japan and Europe should have 100 or more sub 2:10.00 Marathoners in a few months.

Relative to total population, the US is the worst on your list by a wide margin.

observant wrote:

Name the top three marathoners in the world, off the top of your head. Pretty tough, huh, and you're an avid runner. Now, name who you believe is the best football or basketball player in the world. Therein lies the answer to this question.

Why run and win $30,000? A marginal football or basketball player earns ten times that amount. Not many men even get full rides anymore to college for distance running. Football provides 25 brand new scholarships annually. Basketball 11.

Running will continue to evolve into an outlying, fringe sport. The late 1970s and early '80s are gone forever.

Eliud Kipchoge, Wilson Kipsang, and Mo Farah imho. There are some with faster times than Mo for sure, but he is an excellent tactician. Football I can name players easily, but basketball I don't know much outside of big names like Lebron, Lonzo Ball, Steph Curry, James Harden, etc. What you say is true though, I'm just a running nerd who doesn't care much for basketball.

back woods wrote:

Relative to total population, the US is the worst on your list by a wide margin.

Brazil is the worst on that list relative to total population.

Maybe the question should not be about the US being bad, but rather why Japan over-performs.

The answer is that the marathon demands many things that are foundational to Japanese culture.

Discipline, delayed-gratification, mental rigor.

They beat US, by one metric, in one event, currently.

The US wins medals, M and W, 100m through Marathon. Look across all sports and we're probably the best.

Don't we have the only non-Africans under 27, 4 of the 5 non-Africans ever under 13? Plus Hall ran 2:04 and could now win a Sumo medal/belt if he wanted.

ric flair woo wrote:

1970s GBTC member wrote:

The men's marathon is about the only Olympic distance in which we are considerably worse than we were 35-40 years ago.

Only 3 medals were given in the last olympics....and America had 1 of them. We also had the 6th place finisher (finished higher than the 2nd best kenyan, 2nd best ethopian, 2nd best of any country)

sit your grandpa butt down and quit disrespecting our top dogs. nobody cares about the 80s anymore get over it

+1 but it's really on the brojos who keep pushing this trash view. going back at least 3 cycles -- 2016, 2012, 2008 -- the US has always had the higher individual placing on the men's side. US runners keep opting for US majors and focus on place instead of time trialing. Should we see more time trials? Sure. That's why I like Chris Derrick choosing London this year. There's little doubt in my mind if you lined up all of our sub-2:15 guys at Fukuoka that you would see some sub-2:10s and a whole lot more 2:10s, 2:11s, 2:12s.

all the brojos do is complain about the runners. you know what you have a website & presumably some money. go out and sponsor a team, make sure your runners go time time trial courses, and pull up american distance running by the bootstraps. there isn't a ton of money to make a living in this sport so our runners capable of the fastest times go to where they get paid -- NYC + Boston.

209 in the USA will still get you a nice pay day. We've plenty of people / parents investing thousands into their kids soccer clubs and I do not foresee any premier league club calling on these USA clubs and willing to shell out $$$ for.

There is plenty of talent in the USA college system from NCAA to NAIA to develop a stable of 212-209 marathon runners.

209 may not get you on the podium at Berlin, but it can sure pay off student loan debt.

ding ding ding ding wrote:

observant wrote:

Name the top three marathoners in the world, off the top of your head. Pretty tough, huh, and you're an avid runner. Now, name who you believe is the best football or basketball player in the world. Therein lies the answer to this question.

Just stopping by to say that this is one of the more idiotic things posted on LRC in recent times.

LOL. I can probably name 50x the number of current marathoners than I can current baseball, football and basketball players combined.

Runnerboy1 wrote:

209 in the USA will still get you a nice pay day. We've plenty of people / parents investing thousands into their kids soccer clubs and I do not foresee any premier league club calling on these USA clubs and willing to shell out $$$ for.

There is plenty of talent in the USA college system from NCAA to NAIA to develop a stable of 212-209 marathon runners.

209 may not get you on the podium at Berlin, but it can sure pay off student loan debt.

If they have the ability to run 2:09-2:12, they likely went to College on a scholarship and do not have Student Debt Anyway.

This argument is funny coming from you. A 28 flat guy that couldn’t break 2:17. It’s laughable.

My bad!

Djdjdjdjdd wrote:

Maybe the question should not be about the US being bad, but rather why Japan over-performs.

The answer is that the marathon demands many things that are foundational to Japanese culture.

Discipline, delayed-gratification, mental rigor.

They beat US, by one metric, in one event, currently.

The US wins medals, M and W, 100m through Marathon. Look across all sports and we're probably the best.

Don't we have the only non-Africans under 27, 4 of the 5 non-Africans ever under 13? Plus Hall ran 2:04 and could now win a Sumo medal/belt if he wanted.

Isn't it the same with the USA Culture/The Puritan Work Ethic? Work Long and hard and make great sacrifices towards reaching a distant goal.

His marathon personal best was 2:19:52. A VERY respectable time but not sub-2:10. Again, so few have runners on this board fully realize the level of talent it takes to break a sub-2:10:00. Weldon does as he, at least, showed some significant running capability to 28:10 for 10K and 2:19:52 for the marathon. That being said, unless you have broken 2:10:00 downplaying the US doesn't show respect. It simply is a VERY aggressive pace. 4:57 per mile for 26.2 miles is not something many men around the world can achieve.

wejo wrote:

The details are in the Week That Was, but one Japanese high school coach, Hayashi Morozumi, has coached as many current sub 2:10 marathoners as all of America.

Here is the marathon times the top 3 guys coached by Moruzumi ran in 2018:

Suguru Osako 2:05:50

Yuki Sato 2:08:58

Akinobu Murasawa 2:09:47

America had one sub 2:10 guy last year, Galen Rupp. There are only 3 guys still running professionally in the US who have ever broken sub 2:10 (Rupp, Dathan Ritzenhein, and Abdi Abidarahman) and none of the other 2 have done it in 5 years.

This is simply amazing. And it begs the question, what are we doing wrong on the men's side in America?

Running is a (very) niche sport.

Many Westerners have been brainwashed by design to become weak, non-competitive. The stronger ones haven't, but these alphas compete in other sports, they're not NPC lefty tools. Sure, some kidding here to antogonize, but you get my drift.

Of course, the E. Africans as we now know are talented but are also allowed to dope to their heart's content off season and out of competition, as much for social conditioning as for gaining an edge. See above paragraph and put two and two together.

wejo wrote:

The details are in the Week That Was, but one Japanese high school coach, Hayashi Morozumi, has coached as many current sub 2:10 marathoners as all of America.

Here is the marathon times the top 3 guys coached by Moruzumi ran in 2018:

Suguru Osako 2:05:50

My question is if he had them run over XC courses often/put a emphases on XC, is how did Suguru Osako develope that foot strike? Not sure about you, but when I run over a XC course I have to land more heel first/flat footed to get as much traction as possible.