Ryota Yamagata

Breaking ten seconds in the 100 meters was, for decades, the barrier that defined Japanese sprinting. Ryota Yamagata, born in Hiroshima in 1992, holds the Japanese record at 9.95, and that number carries more national weight than a stopwatch reading has any right to. His path is unusual too. He came through Shudo School and then Keio University, an academic pedigree that is not the standard pipeline for elite sprinters anywhere in the world. Before the record he was already part of the story: bronze in the medley relay at the 2009 World Youth Championships, then a member of the Japanese 4x100 meter relay team that took silver in Rio in 2016, the squad that convinced the rest of the world that flawless baton work could beat raw individual speed. What I admire most is the persistence underneath the times. Sprinting looks like pure gift, a matter of being born fast. Watching a career like his, it reads instead as a long argument with your own body, won repeatedly.

Name (English)

Ryota Yamagata

Name (Japanese)

山縣亮太

Reading

やまがた りょうた

Born

June 10, 1992 (age 34)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Monkey

Origin

Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Height

177 cm

Occupation

athletics competitor / sprinter

High school

Shudo Junior & Senior High School

University

Keio University

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/y.ryo34/
• Xhttps://x.com/V7Jqq
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryota%20Yamagata
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B1%B1%E7%B8%A3%E4%BA%AE%E5%A4%AA
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3138653

Tags

• Hiroshima Prefecture
• athletics competitor
• sprinter

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.