WITH OVER 31 YEARS OF WORKING with Japanese athletes, corporate sponsors, and media, preceded by six years of living in Tokyo, Boulder Wave president Brendan Reilly has a deep network of Japan connections. We are able to introduce foreign event directors to Japanese media contacts, assist other agents in bringing their athletes to Japanese events, and serve as a resource for non-Japanese media to gain information on Japan. Brendan also provides commentary and writes occasionally on the Japanese scene, such as the January 2008 Running Times feature on Japanese distance running, “Where the Marathon Matters.”
We also worked closely with the Virgin London Marathon office in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan to bring a delegation of 15 top athletes and their coaches to the Virgin London Marathon, which stepped up and served as a 2011 IAAF World Championships qualification race for the Japanese women affected by the cancellation of the 2011 Nagoya International Women’s Marathon.
Our knowledge base and experience with Japanese long-distance running is second to none. For over two decades Boulder Wave has been trusted by Japan’s corporate-sponsored elite clubs to organize and support their overseas training camps. Over 3,500 Japanese athletes and coaches have used our services for logistics and other assistance. In 2013, for example, Boulder Wave was hired by the Japanese Association of Athletic Federations to organize training camps in Boulder for their 5000/10000 women in the Spring, and then for their three world-championship marathon women (two of whom went on to finish 3rd and 4th in Moscow) in the early summer. We provided similar Boulder support before the 2015 and 2017 IAAF World Championships and 2016 Olympic Games. Other elite Japanese teams who used Boulder Wave’s training camp services in recent years are Daiichi Life Insurance, Honda Motors, Japan Post, Sekisui, Toyota, Uniqlo, Universal, and Wacoal. In 2016, we worked with the JAAF to arrange their pre–Olympic final training site at Princeton University, and three of the country’s six Olympic marathoners came to Boulder for training before Rio. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, all three women members of Japan’s marathon team were represented by Boulder Wave, as well as the dynamic young track athletes Ririka Hironaka and Nozomi Tanaka. The 2024 Paris Olympics will be the eighth consecutive Olympic Games in which Japanese athletes assisted by Boulder Wave compete.
