The amount of men available who can run ~2:20 is significantly higher, thus cheaper/easier to hire. Theres probably only a few dozen women in the world tops who can run sub 2:20, so if they want pacers who can easily run the time, its is not feasible to use women, especially considering athletes available just in Japan.
@@CptAwesomeEsqIII thanks.. do pacers normally run from start to the end with the runners like Yuki Kawauchi did? from other marathons i've watched, some marathon pacers only run 1/4 of the course, while some 1/2... i'm curious...
@@limwowo5902 I’ve only watched a few marathon majors that didn’t allow pacers for the elite field, so no idea. I guess if you are going to go through the trouble of paying an elite athlete to train to run a 1:10 half, you might as well have them go the distance. I don’t understand enough Japanese to know if this is addressed in any of the coverage but maybe there were marketing reasons involved? Not sure why else they would hire Kawauchi considering how famous/probably expensive his appearance fee would be.