The one-year-postponed Tokyo 2021 Tokyo Marathon was held on March 6, 2022, with men's and women's world record holders Kipchoge and Kosgai living up to expectations, winning the men's and women's races respectively.
The Tokyo Marathon is generally held in early March every year, but the 2021 race was first postponed to October due to the surge in the number of new coronavirus infection cases in Japan at that time, and then due to the aggravation of the epidemic, the organizing committee announced that the 2022 race was cancelled and the 2021 race was postponed to 2022.
Postponed to March 6, 2022, the Tokyo Marathon is arguably the "most luxurious" in its history, with 139 invited and elite runners, including 14 top runners overseas. Kipchoge, a Kenyan athlete who won the olympic men's marathon gold medal in Tokyo in 2021, arrived in Tokyo a week ago and trained in a local park. He said on social media that he had won three of the six marathon Grand Slams and now aimed to win the title faster in Tokyo. Despite being 37 years old this year, he still wants to pocket all 6 Grand Slam titles.
Kosgai set a new women's world record with 2 hours, 14 minutes and 04 seconds at the 2019 Chicago Marathon, and won the silver medal at last year's Tokyo Olympic Marathon, and this time she is looking forward to a good result.
After the race began, Kipchoge and six other runners, led by the pacemaker, distanced themselves from the other runners from the beginning. The first group passed 5 km in 14 minutes and 17 seconds; around 10 km, due to a guidance problem, the runners ran the wrong route at the turn, but fortunately corrected it quickly; 20 km, Kipchoge and 5 other people passed in 57 minutes and 53 seconds, and the half-distance time was 1 hour 01 minutes 03 seconds, which was the second fastest first half of the marathon, second only to the 1 hour 01 minute of the 2018 London Marathon. After 25 kilometers, Kipchoge still has Kipruto, Torah and Creel left by his side. At 27 km, the last pacemaker withdrew, Creel and Tora were thrown away, with Kipruto and Kipchoge leading the way. At 40 km, Kipchoge leads Kipruto by 13 seconds. In the end, Kipchoge won the championship in 2 hours 02 minutes and 40 seconds, breaking the record of the East Malaysia Circuit. Kiprutto finished second and Tora finished third. In the women's division, world record holder Kosgai won the championship with a time of 2 hours, 16 minutes and 02 seconds.
The 2020 Tokyo Marathon was affected by the epidemic, and the organizing committee cancelled the public event competition, leaving only the elite group and wheelchair group, and the final participants were more than 200 people. This year, the organizing committee resumed the volkswagen competition, but reduced the scale of participation, and the total number of participants did not exceed 25,000.