Professional triathlete Taro Shirato of Japan made a triumphant return to the CNMI, winning the 11th Annual Rota Blue Triathlon last Nov. 20.<\/p>\n
Shirato topped a field of 102 participants after crossing the finish line in 4:37:32. It was his first time back in the islands after his stint in the 2003 XTERRA Saipan Championship and the 2003 Tagaman.<\/p>\n
A seasoned veteran, Shirato competed in the more challenging B Type course, and he finished about 18 minutes ahead of the second place finisher\u2014fellow countrymen Mikine Yamada (4:55:28), and third place finisher Takahiro Tsunakawa (5:11:25).<\/p>\n
The first place finisher of the women\u2019s division was 23-year-old Sachi Nakamura of Japan. Nakamura was the sixth to cross the line overall at 6:00:32. Second place finisher Toshie Takeuchi was a good 15 minutes behind Nakamura, but her 51-year-old legs were some 22 minutes better than third place finisher, 27-year-old Yoshiko Kitamura (6:39:19). <\/p>\n
The 37 hardcore veterans who were in search of a real workout chose the B Type course, which included a 2.0-kilometer swim, a 90km bike course, and a 21km run. The 65 racers that opted for the A Type course were required to swim 1.5km, bike 40km, and run 10km to complete the course. <\/p>\n
The 65 entrants in the A Type course took the less stressful path to the finish line, but the Olympic distance course was hardly a walk in the park.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Noriaki Ito and Hidea Miyazuka took the top two spots, finishing at 2:05:27 and 2:14:26, respectively, but Saipan\u2019s Dirk Sharer spoiled the sweep by taking third with a time of 2:26:22.<\/p>\n
The top females all hailed from Japan, as Takeo Kinoshita (3:06:16), Yoko Mineo (3:07:42), and Yumi Nakajima (3:11:48) finished one-two-three.<\/p>\n
Other local finishers were Christopher Fryling (2:47:21) and Florian Braig (2:57:36) of Saipan, and Rai Manglona (3:51:25) and Takahashi Yamamoto of Rota (swim only 0:30:16).<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s edition of the Blue was sponsored by the Marianas Visitors Authority, Rota Resort & Country Club, Rota Mayor\u2019s Office, and KFC Triathlon Japan, and consisted of two separate events\u2014both including a unique swim, bike, and run course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professional triathlete Taro Shirato of Japan made a triumphant return to the CNMI, winning the 11th Annual Rota Blue Triathlon last Nov. 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}