Originally Posted by Richard Kennedy
Yes there are 8 international riders invited to race the keirin series each year. HOWEVER, they are invited to ride a special series for them and a number of selected Japanese riders, they do not ride in the general keirin series.
Those Japanese riders who ride against the internationals are not necessarily the best Japanese keirin riders. The best riders generally ride in the main circuit because that's where the bigger prizes are!
There may well be a change in attitudes from the Japanese riders regarding world/olympics in the next few years. Frederic Magne (from France, 3 times world keirin champ) has recently been appointed to the top coaching job in Japan on a long term contract (6 years?). He's had great success as track coach at the UCI sprint school in Aigle and insiders reckon he is already starting to make a difference over in Japan. Given that Japan has a huge pool of keirin riders for Magne to train and select from we could well be seeing Japanese riders starting to really challenge at world level in the next few years.
Will be interesting to see if it happens or not!
Richard, if you're the British rider I think you are, I know you know your track racing BUT, I have heard so often about these mythical "best riders" of keirin, some even say Nakano wasn't the best in Japan, but, if so, why haven't we seen them set world records, world Olympic sprint (team) records, kilometer records? They wouldn't even need to leave Japan - just go to the Kokura indoor wooden velodrome.
When the internationals ride in Japan (they now invite 9 riders) they face Japanese national team riders, guys like Toshinobu Saito (who can ride a 10.4 second 200m), Kojima Keiji (
www.kojimakeiji.net), Ota Shin-Ichi, Keiichiro Yaguchi and Toshiaki Fushimi, and these guys are or were ranked in the top 15 in the world, a few much higher.
So the riders who can't be bothered taking two weeks out of keirin racing to go and win a world title or race against internationals - where are they? If they're better than guys who can get top 10 at the worlds, they must be mighty quick. Admittedly, Terufumi Sakakieda (10.7 - 200m), who is very quick, didn't ride the International series and Shinichi Gokan was a fast and canny rider - but I think, in general, the riders who line up against the internationals are the best, if not close to the best, in Japan.
I'm not saying I know the best riders don't race in the international scene - the keirin world here is hard to know well - but it would be a surprise to find more than 2 or 3 riders better than the ones who race (and beat) guys like Bos, Bayley and Neiwand.
And get_nuts at the risk of sounding like I'm disagreeing with everyone for the sake of it, I think the rigid structure of Japanese keirin racing holds Japanese riders back. Having to choose to ride senko,
makuri, oikona or mak and having to tell people what you will do, then doing this week in week out for months stops a rider being able to respond quickly when riding outside of Japan.
Whew! Rants over.