Mixed fortunes in Japan

by Brett Larner

While the Nagoya Women's Marathon was run with 4700 runners without a single case of covid being detected as a result the optimism this raised does not apply throughout Japan.

As a result of the resurgent spread of the coronavirus in Miyagi prefecture the organisers of the Sendai International Half Marathon announced on 5 April that this year’s race, which had been scheduled to take place on a reduced scale in May, has been cancelled. It is the second year in a row that the race has been cancelled. In normal years the race is a major event, drawing over 10,000 people from across the country to run through the fresh green streets of the ‘City of Trees’.

This year’s race had been scheduled to have only 4000 entrants as one of the countermeasures planned against the spread of the coronavirus. But with Miyagi prefecture currently leading Japan in the number of new infections per capita, most of them in Sendai, the decision was made to cancel. Miyagi was one of three prefectures placed under a limited state of emergency on 5 April in relation to the spread of the virus.