Yuka Ando Runs Down Asian Games Gold Medalist Chumba to Win Nagoya Women’s Marathon

Ando and the other top Japanese women in the race, Ayuko Suzuki and Rika Kaseda, had the hopeless task of running a 2:18:58 to make the Paris Olympics team, almost 3 minutes faster than any of them had run before. Hopeless, but not to say they didn’t take a serious swing at it. The first 5 km was perfect, 16:28 projecting to exactly 2:18:58, but after that the quartet of pacers struggled to keep things steady. By 13 km pacers Charlotte Purdue and Judith Korir had dropped out of the lead pack, leaving the other two to try to keep it together. At halfway it was down to the three Japanese favorites, Chumba, Oregon World Championships gold medalist Gotytom Gebreslase and Romanian Kenyan Delvine Relin Meringor in 1:09:56, and a faster 5km from 20 to 25 km shook Meringor off the back.

Surges for position at the 25 km drink table put some separation between the five remaining leaders, and that’s where the action began. With 2:17:29 marathoner Sheila Chepkirui still leading them Gotytom and Chumba pulled away, their projected finish ticking toward 2:19-flat. Ando and Kaseda stayed in pursuit, leaving Suzuki alone in back. By 30 km Gotytom and Chumba were 30 seconds up on Ando and Kaseda, who had 10 seconds on Suzuki. Nearing 35 km Ando dropped Kaseda and started to close on the two leaders, and just as it looked like she was in range Gotytom suddenly stopped and pulled off the course. As Ando, then Kaseda, then Suzuki went by Gotytom stretched her left leg and made a few attempts to get going again, but within just a few m she was out for good.

With less than 5 km to go everything started contracting, Ando making contact with Chumba at almost the exact same time that Suzuki passed Kaseda, the gap between the two pairs also shrinking. It came down to the last 800 m for Ando to make her final move, kicking away from Chumba for the win in 2:21:18, 18 seconds better than in her runner-up finish 7 years ago. Chumba was next in 2:21:25, Suzuki taking 3rd in a PB 2:21:33 despite falling flat on her face with 100m to go, and Kaseda 4th just off her best in 2:22:11.

Japanese women originally had to run 2:21:41 or better to score the third spot on the Paris team, before Honami Maeda raised the bar to 2:18:58 with her NR in Osaka in January. Both Ando and Suzuki cleared that original mark, no small task. “Thank you to everyone who helped me get here and run my best,” Ando said post-race. “I may not be going to Paris, but I got the win here. I’m happy.”

Coming up from the second pack, Yuyu Xia ran a PB 2:25:45 to become the fourth Chinese woman to get the 2:26:50 Olympic standard. That was enough to put her at 2nd-fastest among them, the 3rd-fastest Zhixuan Li finishing 11th in 2:28:49 after getting the standard in Nagoya last year in 2:26:28. Li Bai was bumped to 4th with a 2:26:33 in Wuxi last year, but with almost two months still to go to the deadline it’s still up in the air who will make it onto the Chinese team.