On May 14 and 15, 2016, a long distance track meet was held in Nippon Sport Science University and 13 athletes from Eritrea, both women and men, had competed in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
They are aiming to participate in The Rio 2016 Olympic Games, The African Championships in Athletics and The IAAF World Junior Championships. Therefore they visited to Japan with the support of FGC and SEISA Group in order to make their personal record better than the qualifying standard which is provided by each event.
It was the first time that such a large number of Eritrean athletes visited Japan. Eritrea is an African powerhouse in long distance track, so they got so much of attention from the Japanese sports community and media.
As we expected, they run all-out to the finish with top or higher-ranking. Two of them met the 5,000 meters standard record of Rio 2016 Olympic, five met the African Championships standard and three of them met the IAAF Junior Championship standard.
Although the Eritrean athletic team left Japan on May 16, two athletes and the Secretary General of the Eritrean National Athletics Federation stayed for an extra week to have exchange with the people in the Eritrea’s Pre-Games Training Camp partners in Tokyo 2020 - Kanagawa Prefecture, Odawara City and Hakone Town. On 18, they participated in the training of a company’s athletic club in Kanagawa and ran in the wind on the coast of Enoshima. On 19, They visited Sengokuhara Kindergarten in Hakone Town, Shimonaka Kindergarten and Sakawa Kids Club in Odawara City. They had enjoyable times of playing, singing and dancing with the children at each place.
