The university men's ekiden season dominates the calendar in Japan, three main races spanning an arc from October's Izumo Ekiden , 6 stages totaling 45.1 km, November's National University Ekiden, 8 stages totaling 106.8 km, and the biggest of them all, January's Hakone Ekiden, 10 stages over 2 days totaling 217.1 km. This year's season kicks off Monday at Izumo, where 2022-2023 winner Komazawa University tries to make it 3 in a row. Despite losing 2 of last year's top members, Taiyo Yasuhara and Mebuki Suzuki , to graduation and the absence of star 3rd-year Keita Sato who is still rehabbing an injury, Komazawa's team is almost exactly as strong as it was last year, when it won by 2 minutes despite being ranked only 4th in the field. But out of the 9 Kanto Region teams in the Izumo field, Komazawa is the only one that isn't stronger on weighted average of its 6 fastest men over 5000 m and 10000 m. That means it comes in ranked 6th, still a solid c
Ekiden season saw two of its first important races happen this weekend. Modeled after January's Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden, Sunday's Okukuma Ekiden in Kumamoto put corporate, collegiate and high school teams together on a marathon-length course with teams of 4 all running double-digit distances and high schoolers with teams of 7 and all but the 10.0 km First Stage split into two parts. Tosu Kogyo H.S. starting runner Taiyo Iwasa led corporate leaguer Tomoya Ogikubo (Hiramatsu Byoin) by 2 seconds on the First Stage, with Omuta H.S. third runner Yuma Matsuda passing both teams to take the lead. It took until the anchor stage for Hiramatsu Byoin's Yeneblo Biyazen to catch Omuta, crossing the line in 2:06:39 with Omuta anchor Nobuyuki Anai 7 seconds back for 1st in the high school division. Soka University was the only other team to go under 2:07, 3rd overall and 2nd in the college/corporate division in 2:06:57. Rakunan H.S. was next in 2:07:07, with e