Skip to main content

Memolead Announces New Women's Corporate Team With Eye to 2020 Tokyo Olympics

http://bit.ly/1mP9Kti

translated by Brett Larner

On June 30 the Memolead Group wedding and funeral ceremony management and production company based in Seihi Nagayomachi held a press conference to announce its sponsorship of a new women's athletics team.  It is the first new women's corporate team to be based in Nagasaki since the launch of the Juhachi Ginko team two years ago.

Appearing at the press conference in Nagasaki were corporate representatives and new head coach Yuki Mori.  Mori joined Memolead the year before last and, remaining active as a runner, captained the Nagasaki prefecture team at last year's final Grand Tour Kyushu ekiden.  Based on his performance and leadership there, corporate management took an interest and agreed to fund a new women's team.  The team will focus on women interested in the marathon and other long distances.

With a planned team start date at the beginning of the new fiscal year next April, Mori intends to retire from his current position by the end of the current year to take on the head coach's duties.  "My aim is to develop athletes who will go from Memolead to the national team," he said of his goals.  Senior Managing Director Kosei Fukuda commented, "As Nagasaki prefecture looks far ahead to the Tokyo Olympics, we want to do our part to help the development of the athletics world."  The new team's scouting activities before April will focus on young, developing athletes, with a planned initial lineup of at least three runners.

Comments

TokyoRacer said…
Another crazy Japanese company name. If you started a wedding and funeral ceremony company (which is itself strange), you would name it Memolead, right?

Anyway, nice of them to sponsor a running team.

Most-Read This Week

The Ivy League at the Izumo Ekiden in Review

Last week I was contacted by Will Geiken , who I'd met years ago when he was a part of the Ivy League Select Team at the Izumo Ekiden . He was looking for historical results from Izumo and lists of past team members, and I was able to put together a pretty much complete history, only missing the alternates from 1998 to 2010 and a little shaky on the reverse transliterations of some of the names from katakana back into the Western alphabet for the same years. Feel free to send corrections or additions to alternate lists. It's interesting to go back and see some names that went on to be familiar, to see the people who made an impact like Princeton's Paul Morrison , Cornell's Max King , Stanford's Brendan Gregg in one of the years the team opened up beyond the Ivy League, Cornell's Ben de Haan , Princeton's Matt McDonald , and Harvard's Hugo Milner last year, and some of the people who struggled with the format. 1998 Team: 15th of 21 overall, 2:14:10 (43

Hirabayashi Runs PB at Shanghai Half, WR Holder Nakata Dominates Fuji Five Lakes - Weekend Road Roundup

Returning to the roads after his 2:06:18 win at February's Osaka Marathon, Kiyoto Hirabayashi (Koku Gakuin University) took 5th at Sunday's Shanghai Half Marathon in a PB 1:01:23, just under a minute behind winner Roncer Kipkorir Konga (Kenya) who clocked a CR 1:00:29. After inexplicably running the equivalent of a sub-59 half marathon to win the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage, Aoi Ota (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) was back to running performances consistent with his other PBs with a 1:02:30 for 8th. His AGU teammate Kyosuke Hiramatsu was 10th in 1:04:00. Women's winner Magdalena Shauri (Tanzania) also set a new CR in 1:09:57. Aoyama Gakuin runners took the top four spots in the men's half marathon at the Aomori Sakura Marathon , with Hakone alternate Kosei Shiraishi getting the win in 1:04:32 and B-team members Shunto Hamakawa and Kei Kitamura 2nd and 3rd in 1:04:45 and 1:04:48. Club runners took the other division titles, Hina Shinozaki winning the women's half

Morii Surprises With Second-Ever Japanese Sub-2:10 at Boston

With three sub-2:09 Japanese men in the race and good weather conditions by Boston standards the chances were decent that somebody was going to follow 1981 winner Toshihiko Seko 's 2:09:26 and score a sub-2:10 at the Boston Marathon . But nobody thought it was going to be by a 2:14 amateur. Paris Olympic team member Suguru Osako had taken 3rd in Boston in 2:10:28 in his debut seven years ago, and both he and 2:08 runners Kento Otsu and Ryoma Takeuchi were aiming for spots in the top 10, Otsu after having run a 1:01:43 half marathon PB in February and Takeuchi of a 2:08:40 marathon PB at Hofu last December. A high-level amateur with a 2:14:15 PB who scored a trip to Boston after winning a local race in Japan, Yuma Morii told JRN minutes before the start of the race, "I'm not thinking about time at all. I'm going to make top 10, whatever time it takes." Running Boston for the first time Morii took off with a 4:32 on the downhill opening mile, but after that  Sis