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."
An Olympian in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, Shogo Nakamura (Fujitsu) announced on his social media that he has entered Waseda University 's Graduate School of Sport Science with the start of the new academic year this week. A graduate of Mie's Ueno Kogyo H.S. , Nakamura went to Komazawa University before joining Fujitsu in 2015. His senior year of high school he was 3rd overall and 2nd Japanese in the 5000 m at the National High School Track and Field Championships, and in the fall the same year he ran what was at the time the 7th-fastest high school mark ever, 13:50.38. At Komazawa he scored four individual stage wins across the three big university ekidens. In 2019 he won the MGC Race, Japan's marathon trials for the Tokyo Olympics, where he was 62nd in 2:22:23. Nakamura indicated that he would be studying "top sports management" under professor Takeo Hirata . "I'll be balancing competition and academics," Nakamura wrote. "I'm r...
Comments
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.