I was very touched by the video of Juntendo's Hiroyuki Ono on the Hakone 5-区. Today I came across another video of a news segment which includes home video of Ono going down, an interview with him, and highlights of Hakone. The first section is on the three stage records set this year by Mekubo Mogusu, Yuki Sato and Jun Shinoto (2008 Hakone Ekiden MVP). The second is on the three schools which DNF'd, showing Tokai's Takehiro Arakawa, Daito Bunka's Naoki Sumida, and Juntendo's Ono. I'll try to put up a translation of the audio track shortly. The text printed across the bottom of the still below is Ono saying, "I want to apologize to everybody."
After 54 years at the Asahi Kasei corporate team, first as athlete and then as coach, Takeshi Soh will retire at the end of this month. Together with his twin brother Shigeru Soh they formed a duo who were icons of the Japanese marathoning world and went all the way to the Olympics. After retiring from competition Takeshi devoted himself to coaching young athletes and came to play a primary role in the leadership of Japanese long distance. His list of achievements is long, and so is the list of those he influenced and inspired. His twin Shigeru was chosen for three Olympic teams in the marathon, Montreal in 1976, Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. Takeshi was named to the Moscow and Los Angeles teams, placing 4th in L.A. to confirm his position as one of the greatest names in the sport in that era. After becoming a coach the twins helped lead Hiromi Taniguchi to gold at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships, Koichi Morishita to silver a year later at the Barcelona Olympics, and o...
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but how can they destroy themselves like that ??
Dehydratation ? in winter ?
It is really surprising to see a almost pro-runner in those conditions + so many other cases of DNF
I took some photos of the Juntedo guys after the finish on day two - here: http://tvvas.blogspot.com/2008/01/hakone-ekiden.html#links
I ran the 5-ku 3 days before the race both this year and last year. The stage is very, very hard. This year it was also very warm; even at my comfortable effort level (4:15/km average) I was soaked by the time I finished. Same goes for Mika. Neither of us had any trouble believing dehydration could have been an issue. It's also come out since this year's Hakone that the organizers do not allow runners to use the sports drinks they use in training, only water, so electrolyte loss may have been a problem. Daito Bunka's runner having dehydration problems on the 9th stage was more surprising, but that's how it goes.
But essentially, I don't think you can underestimate how hard these student runners try. They are near-professional in training and ability but have entirely different passion and motivation and often try far too hard. There has been some criticism that Hakone is getting too big and too popular and that it is putting too much pressure on the runners to perform, resulting in more meltdowns.