Skip to main content

Toyokawa Girls Win Record-Setting Fourth Title at 25th National High School Girls Ekiden

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20131222-00000075-spnannex-spo

translated and edited by Brett Larner
click photo for video highlights courtesy of NHK


The 25th edition of the National High School Girls Ekiden Championships took place Dec. 22 in Kyoto.  In honor of the event's anniversary, eleven extra teams were added to the forty-seven champion high schools from each of Japan's prefectures to bring the field up to fifty-eight schools competing over five stages totalling 21.0975 km.

After missing out on defending its 2011 win last year, Toyokawa H.S. of Aichi returned to the top this year with its fourth national title, the most in Nationals history.  2010 national champion Kojokan H.S. (Okayama) took 2nd, battling Suma Gakuen H.S. (Hyogo) all the way to the final Fifth Stage before pulling ahead for the runner-up position.  Defending champion Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. (Kyoto) was 4th.

Winner Toyokawa's time of 1:06:54 tied the second-fastest mark ever at the National Championships, the first sub-1:07 clocking in eight years and blowing out the rest of the field by nearly a minute.  With its 2nd place finish Kojokan continued a ten-year streak of making it to the podium.

25th National High School Girls Ekiden Championships
Kyoto, Dec. 22, 2013
58 teams, 5 stages, 21.0975 km
click here for complete results

Top Team Performances
1. Toyokawa H.S. (Aichi) - 1:06:54
2. Kojokan H.S. (Okayama) - 1:07:51
3. Suma Gakuen H.S. (Hyogo) - 1:07:53
4. Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. (Kyoto) - 1:07:55
5. Aomori Yamada H.S. (Aomori) - 1:08:11
6. Yamanashi Gakuin Prep H.S (Yamanashi) - 1:08:21
7. Tokiwa H.S, (Gunma) - 1:08:33
8. Osaka Kunei Joshi H.S. (Osaka) - 1:08:33
9. Eda H.S. (Kanagawa) - 1:08:40
10. Nagano Higashi H.S.) - 1:09:09

Stage Best Performances
First Stage (6.0 km) - Saki Yoshimizu (Chikushi Joshi Gakuen H.S.) - 19:28
Second Stage (4.0975 km) - Yui Fukuda (Suma Gakuen H.S.) - 12:44
Third Stage (3.0 km) - Nanako Kajiya (Toyokawa H.S.) - 9:33
Fourth Stage (3.0 km) - Harumi Okamoto (Tokiwa H.S.) - 9:10
Fifth Stage (5.0 km) - Rosemary Wanjiru (Kenya/Aomori Yamada H.S.) - 15:29

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Tokyo Olympics Marathon Trials Winner Nakamura Enters Waseda Grad School

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...

Weekend Road and Track Roundup

A roundup of the main road and track action on the last weekend of Japan's 2024-25 academic and fiscal year: Doubling off a 2:07:06 PB at the Tokyo Marathon 4 weeks ago, Tatsuya Maruyama took bronze at the Asian Marathon Championships in Jiaxing, China in 2:11:56. Gold went to North Korea's Il Ryong Han in a breakaway 2:11:18, with silver medalist Tianyu Chen of China just ahead of Maruyama in 2:11:50. Japan's Shungo Yokota was a distant 4th in 2:14:00, with Japan-based Mongolian NR holder Ser-Od Bat-Ochir 6th in 2:15:14. Japanese women Kaede Kawamura and Natsumi Matsushita were 5th and 6th in 2:31:26 and 2:34:40, with medals going to China's Bing Wu , gold in 2:26:01, North Korea's Kwang-Ok Ri , silver right behind her in 2:26:07, and defending gold medalist Khishigsaikhan Galbadrakh landing in bronze this time in 2:28:56, her third sub-2:29 performance so far in 2025. Back home, four men broke 2:20 at the Fukui Sakura Marathon . Ko Kobayashi from the Shi...

Japan Names Marathon Teams for Tokyo World Championships

On Mar. 26 the JAAF named its women's and men's marathon teams for September's Tokyo World Championships. On the women's side the team has veterans Sayaka Sato and Yuka Ando off the strength of a runner-up finish for Sato in Nagoya this year and a win in Nagoya last year by Ando, and newcomer Kana Kobayashi , 23, who has risen quickly from being a fun runner at Waseda University last year to a 2nd-place finish in Osaka Women's this year. Paris Olympics 6th-placer Yuka Suzuki was named alternate after finishing 3rd behind Kobayashi in Osaka Women's. On the men's side the team is led by last year's Fukuoka International Marathon CR breaker Yuya Yoshida and this year's Osaka runner-up Ryota Kondo . The 3rd spot on the team is reserved for JMC Series winner Naoki Koyama , who hasn't cleared the 2:06:30 World Championships qualifying standard and has to wait for the May 4 qualifying deadline for confirmation that the 1184 points he has in the Roa...