He won the Houston Marathon (15th, USA) with a time of 2 hours 19 minutes 24 seconds, the second fastest in Japanese history.Hitomi Shintani(Sekisui Chemical) attended the championship press conference held in Tokyo on the 22nd. Towards the 2024 Paris Olympics “At this point, it is not in my mind,” he indicated his intention not to aim for the Olympics in any event, including track. Regarding the reason, he said, “To me, participating in the Olympics and becoming a representative of Japan is not everything. What is required of an athlete is to produce results. However, I recognize that I can do that without participating in the Paris Olympics.” explained.
Another reason was the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which I actually experienced. “It’s hard to say, but until now I think the Olympics were considered to be justice, but after experiencing the Tokyo Olympics, I felt as an athlete, ‘How much do the people want the Olympics now?’ Being an athlete isn’t something you can do on your own, and because I felt in Tokyo that it wasn’t something you could do on your own, I didn’t aim for the Japan national team or the Olympics. I thought it wasn’t the time.”
This year, in addition to the 5,000m track race, he plans to participate in the 5km and 10km road races from spring to summer. “I’m going to do everything to aim for the record, rather than trying to compete. I’m going to focus on the competition in the ekiden,” he said.
