Globe Runner blog

Constantina Dita wins the Olympic marathon at 38 years of age. Paula Radcliffe wins her third New York comeback race, raising hopes that she might finally win the Olympic marathon in 2012, when she too will be 38. For good measure, Ludmila Petrova finishes second in New York, and runs 2.25.43, fastest ever by a 40 year old woman. At the other end of the scale, 21 year old Sammy Wanjiru overwhelms his opponents, and breaks the Olympic record by three minutes, when winning in Beijing. All great stories. As a colleague remarked recently, apart from Usain Bolt (and maybe Yelena Isinbayeva), just about the only part of athletics that’s working is the marathon.

Well, one of the other women who played a major part in making the marathon world a more exciting place, announced her retirement from elite racing last week. In doing so, she said, “I still love running, and will be running into my 50s and 60s. This is only the end for Naoko Takahashi the pro, from now on it will be Naoko Takahashi the jogger”.

Thus the 36 year old Japanese, winner of the Olympic marathon in Sydney 2000, and first woman under 2hr 20mins, in 2001, quits the sharp end of the marathon scene. But she leaves a lot more than superlative runs, she takes with her into the world of jogging a sense of fun.

There is still a tendency to for us in the west to treat Orientals - Japanese, Chinese, Koreans - as ‘exotic’ and ‘inscrutable,’ members of a mysterious culture. The fabulous Olympic Games in Beijing will have diminished somewhat that presumption of the world’s most populous nation. But, of course, there are stark differences, not least in languages which even on the page remain impervious to most of us.

I once made the mistake of asking a Japanese marathon man, who said he was training to be a monk, if the hours spent in long-distance running weren’t good preparation for the meditative life. He looked at me pityingly, smiled, and said, “No”. It was around the same time, early this century, that I was privileged to get a close-up, one-on-one interview with Takahashi, and I’m glad to report that she was even more fun.

That’s something which many people might already have gleaned from stories of her early career. When she first joined the group training under coach Yoshio Koide, like all newcomers, she was asked to ‘do a turn,’ ie sing, dance, tell jokes or a story. Takahashi wrapped herself in tin-foil, and did an impromptu dance, simulating the friendly ghost Q-taro from the comic strip of the same name. Her colleagues nick-named her Q-chan, ‘Little Ghost’.

After she won the Olympic marathon in Sydney, she become the heroine of her own comic strip or ‘manga,’ entitled Kazekko, or Daughter of the Wind. This echoed a description she once gave of running, as, “like a knife, slicing through wind”.

I was fortunate enough to be in Berlin 2001, when Takahashi enhanced her legend by becoming the first sub-2.20 woman in history, winning in 2.19.46. She was already due to be given the Association of International Marathons (AIMS) Athlete of the Year award for her Olympic victory, at a lunch the following day. But this performance only served to underline her status, and I managed to wheedle a seat next to her at the lunch table. Sitting opposite were coach Koide and his wife. Koide turned out to be as much a character as his charge.

A beard and crew-cut, and his wiry fitness made him look, even at 62, more like a samurai than a former headmaster. He had been a 2.26 marathoner himself in the early 1960s, and said he still accompanied Takahashi on some of her slower training runs, up to 40k. But, he said with a broad smile, “I am the turtle. She is the hare”. In her acceptance speech for the award, Takahashi had tried to pass herself off as, “An ordinary runner, who would like to get married, and have children”.

Mistaking the Japanese coach-athlete relationship as astutely as I had misjudged the trainee-monk, I asked her if she would have to get her coach’s approval of any potential suitor. Barely suppressing her mirth at my naivety, she shot back, “The first he’ll know about it is when I show him the baby”. Across the table, Koide exploded with laughter.

But that was the heyday. Takahashi won Berlin again the following year, but never reproduced her record breaking form. She failed to make the Olympic squad for Athens 2004, when her colleague Mizuko Noguchi won. She subsequently sacked Koide, but failed again to make the Bejing Olympic team. But she had already made her indelible mark on marathon history - twice!

There’ll still be a Q-jogger out there somewhere, racking up the k’s. But it can be with great pride (and a great sense of fun) that the Little Ghost can head for the exit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.