Punta Umbria, Spain - During his remarks at the opening ceremony of the 2011 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Punta Umbria, IAAF President Lamine Diack called for a minute’s silence in remembrance of the victims of the earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan with such violent force recently.

Barely 30 minutes later, six young Japanese women clinched a team bronze medal behind Ethiopia and Kenya in the women’s junior race.

Japan had won 17 team medals in the previous 22 years of junior women’s competition, but surely none were as poignant as this one. It would be trite in the extreme to suggest that a sporting achievement can assuage the grief that Japan is feeling now, but it gave both the young women who had resolved to come to Spain at this difficult time and the distance-running loving people of Japan one small thing to feel good about.

All six members of the team are junior high school students. One of them, Natsumi Toshida, is among 27 athletes (including three from Kenya) attending Sendai High School in the region which bore some of the worst of the earthquake and consequent tsunami.

Toshida’s school will be closed until May. Her family and friends are without some of the basic essentials of life, such as a secure water supply. Shops and other landmarks she grew up with in her local area have vanished, or been severely damaged. Yet, she said, neither she nor her family had been in any doubt she should come to Spain to compete in the world cross-country.

“All my friends, relatives and family told me to go to Spain, because I had worked so hard to get there,” Yoshida said.

“They told me just to go and do my very best. So I’m very happy and honoured to bring back a medal for them. One of the reasons I can be here now is the support from my coach and family, so the fact I can bring them back a medal is a big honour.”

Despite being closer to the tragedy than most of her teammates, Toshida said she had always been determined to come to Spain. She will go back home to a different situation. Normally, she lives in a dormitory at Sendai High School. Now, she will be forced to go back to her home town of Ibaraki, closer to Tokyo.

Japan’s Punta Umbria representatives were at a training camp in Chiba, just outside Tokyo, when the quake struck the northern end of the main island of Honshu.

The Nagoya women’s marathon, scheduled for a few days after the quake, was cancelled and there is still some doubt whether next month’s Nagano marathon will go ahead as scheduled. Despite that, Keisuke Sawaki, the senior managing director of the Japanese athletic federation as well as a member of the IAAF Cross Country Committee, said there was never any discussion as to whether the cross country team should still go to Punta Umbria.

“For the athletes, however, we told them to consider it with their family and friends and the federation had talks with the High School club and coaches,” Sawaki said.

“We were worried about how the disaster would impact on the emotions of the athletes. We were very worried about that. But we are very satisfied with this result. It shows that even in the face of disaster, Japanese athletes can show their best face to the world.”

Japan is renowned for its love of marathons and distance running. Asked what impact the medal would have on the public at such a traumatic time, Sawaki said that with three crises of the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear reactor problems, the athletes’ achievement showed people could work together in the face of disaster and overcome it.

“When we see how these athletes can work together and overcome disaster, we hope that the Japanese people who love marathon and distance running will be proud of us bringing a medal back in competition against Kenya and Ethiopia. We felt we could send a very good message. We are proud and honoured.”

Of a total of 23 medals Japan has won at World Cross Country, 21 have been won by its women, 19 of those by its junior women. Only one of those has been an individual medal – a bronze by Yoshiko Fujinaga in the 1999 junior women’s race behind Worknesh Kidane and Vivian Cheruiyot.

In 23 editions of the women’s junior race since 1989, Japan has taken home a medal on 18 occasions. None came in more poignant circumstances than the one they will take home from Punta Umbria.

Len Johnson for the IAAF