Hitomi Niiya
Niiya (right) at the 2012 Olympics
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26 February 1988 (age 29) Sōja, Okayama, Japan |
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Medal record
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Hitomi Niiya (新谷 仁美 Niiya Hitomi?, born 26 February 1988 in Sōja, Okayama) is a Japanese long-distance runner who competes in athletics, cross country running and marathon races. Niiya competed for Japan at the 2012 Summer Olympics. She represents Team Toyota Industries in national competition.
She formed part of the Japanese junior team at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships from 2004 to 2006, helping them to team medals each time. She also won a bronze medal over 5000 metres at the 2005 World Youth Championships. Niiya won the 2007 Tokyo Marathon at the age of eighteen in her debut over the marathon distance. Her best for the event is 2:30:58 hours. She has also had success in ekiden relay running, having represented Japan at the Yokohama International Women's Ekiden and helped Toyota Industries to their first team title domestically.
Niiya attended Kōjōkan Senior High School and began competing in track and field and cross country running while there. After winning the junior selection race at the Chiba Cross Country, Niiya made her international debut at the 2004 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and her nineteenth-place finish helped the Japanese junior women to the team bronze medal. She took a consecutive victory in Chiba in February 2005, thus returning to the world event the following year. She improved to thirteenth place and helped the Japanese team to another bronze alongside Akane Wakita and Yurika Nakamura. The 2005 World Youth Championships in Athletics in Marrakesh provided her the venue for her first international individual medal, as she claimed the bronze in the 3000 metres. That October, she won the 3000 m at the 2005 National Sports Festival of Japan in Okayama, being the only local athlete to win at the festival. At the end of that year she won at the inter-high school championships and ran the second fastest time ever for a Japanese high school student in the 5000 metres, taking her title with a time of 15:28.70 minutes.
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