6-Dec-1998 – Asian Games – 2:21:47 – ASICS Sortie Japan
Date of birth: 6-May-1972
Nationality: Japanese
Women-Only World Record duration: 3 years, 4 months, 8 days
The athlete:
Before her future heroics where she set both the marathon world record and the Olympic marathon record, Naoko Takahashi was relatively new to distance running having finished 7th in her debut at the 1997 Osaka Women’s Marathon. Her next race would be the 1998 Nagoya Women’s Marathon, which she won in dominant fashion, her time 2:25:48 and comfortably ahead of her nearest competitor. It resulted in her selection to the Japanese team for the 1998 Asian Games.
Despite Bangkok providing runners with hot and humid conditions, Takahashi absolutely dominated her competition. By 10 kilometres she was more than four minutes ahead of second, and she kept increasing the gap until the finish where she was over thirteen minutes ahead. Her time was 2:21:47, the new women’s only marathon world record.
I’m aware that the Association of Road Racing Statisticians do not consider this performance to have been on a record quality course. This somewhat confuses me, as there is no suggestion that the course was not accurately measured. Looking at the course map, it equally appears that the start and finish are sufficiently close i.e. the course is not point-to-point like the Boston Marathon. As always if I’ve missed something please get in touch.
As for Takahashi, she would go on to secure selection for the 2000 Sydney Olympics where she would set the new Olympic record for the women’s marathon. You can read more about that here.
The shoes:
With their genesis in the 1958 Marup, the Sortie was being tested in prototype form as early as 1978. Taking everything that had been learned from the countless updates to the Marup series, it was the typical ultralight racing flat. It has only the slightest amount for midsole to support elite athletes. Initially launched in 1981, it would itself spawn countless iterations including the UL-100 of 1986 which had ASICS assess every detail to strip out even more weight. The final product, as the name suggests, came in at under 100 grams!
Developments kept coming, the model soon swapping nylon for more modern mesh while still retaining the same overall silhouette. Takahashi had the benefit of these updates, her version of the Sortie still broadly the same as the first such model released nearly two decades previously.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoko_Takahashi
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2008/10/29/more-sports/track-field/q-chan-announces-retirement/
https://www.worldathletics.org/news/news/takahashi-marathon-barrier-breaker-announces
https://www.espn.com.au/olympics/trackandfield/news/story?id=3668579
https://corp.asics.com/en/about_asics/history
https://www.lydiardacademy.org/photo-gallery
https://lydiardtrainingandacademy.medium.com/grow-the-roots-in-the-winter-4e09c5b929e8