Education
Born in Sagamihara, she attended Kanagawa Prefectural Asamizodai High School and competed in the 1500 metres as a teenager.
吉川美香
Born in Sagamihara, she attended Kanagawa Prefectural Asamizodai High School and competed in the 1500 metres as a teenager.
She has represented Japan at the Olympics, World Championships in Athletics, the Asian Athletics Championships, and the Asian Games. A small and light runner – 1.55 m tall (5 ft 1 in) and 39 kg in weight (86 lbs) – she made her first appearance at the Japan Championships in Athletics in 2005, finishing fourth in the 1500 m final. She broke through at the senior level the following year, winning the Japanese title, running at the World Cross Country Short Race and placing seventh at the 2006 Asian Games.
Yoshikawa maintained her position as the top Japanese 1500 m runner by winning a second national title in 2007.
She was fourth at the 2007 Asian Athletics Championships and for the first time she represented Japan at the World Championships in Athletics, held in Osaka. She did race regionally however, finishing seventh at the 2009 Asian Athletics Championships and sixth at the 2010 Asian Games.
Having reached a plateau in her middle distance career, she changed her focus to running over longer distances from 2011 onwards. She had a best of 71:13 minutes on her half marathon debut at the Marugame Half Marathon and set a 5000 metres best of 15:31.78 minutes on the track to take second at the Japanese Corporate Championships.
Her transition to long-distance proved successful in the 2012 season.
Here, she finished sixteenth in the 10,000 metres race, but was knocked out in the heats of the 5000 metres race. She ran the final leg of the 2013 Inter-Prefectural Women"s Ekiden and helped Kanagawa Prefecture to a new course record.