Toyota and Tanaka Drop New Course Records

Toyota and Tanaka Drop New Course Records - Ekiden Weekend Roundup

Qualifying action for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships continued Sunday with the combined Chubu and Hokuriku regional ekidens. Running both an A and a B team with only the A team having a chance of going on to race on New Year's Day, Toyota destroyed the field as it took 1st and 3rd overall.

After a slow start the A-team's Chihiro Miyawaki broke the course record on the 11.5 km Third Stage, covering it in 32:55 to move into the lead. Toyota A-team runners won the last three of the race's seven stages, winning by more than three minutes over closest competition Aisan Kogyo as they broke the overall course record with a new mark of 4:05:35 for the 83.5 km event. Toyota's B-team finished just 16 seconds behind Aisan Kogyo, showing just how much of a stranglehold Toyota has on the Chubu Region. YKK was the top team from the tiny Hokuriku Region, finishing 9th overall in 4:13:34 but moving on to the New Year Ekiden.

In Kyoto, Kwansei Gakuin University beat regional favorite Ritsumeikan University to win the Tango University Ekiden, the 79th edition of the Osaka-area Kansai Region University Men's Ekiden Championships. Kwansei Gakuin's Naoki Nakamura took the lead on the first of the 84.4 km race's eight stages, and from there to the finish the team was never seriously challenged for the lead despite a Fourth Stage course record by Ritsumeikan's Tsuyoshi Masumoto and wins on the last two stages by Ritsumeikan men. Nearly three minutes down at the start of his run with 11.7 km to make it up, Ritsumeikan anchor Shinji Koiwa got as close as 37 seconds back Kwansei Gakuin's Ikkai Kojima but simply didn't have the ground ahead of him in which to make it all up. Kwansei Gakuin won in 4:18:09, Ritsumeikan next across the line in 4:18:46.

All across the country top high schools continued the buildup to next month's National High School Ekiden Championships with dozens of prefectural and regional championship ekidens. There were simply too many high-level races to cover, but bearing special mention was the 33rd Kinki Region High School Girls Ekiden. On the 6.0 km First Stage Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. senior Nozomi Tanaka, who ran 8:54.27 to win last month's National Sports Festival Women's 3000 m, blasted a new course record of 18:51 for the opening leg, leaving Chinatsu Tarumoto of Suma Gakuen H.S. and other competition over 40 seconds behind.

Nishiwaki Kogyo finished only 4th overall in the end over a minute and a half behind 2016 national champions Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S., but her powerful stage win meant Tanaka picked up her sixth-straight win since finishing 2nd in the 3000 m at the summer's National High School Track and Field Championships. Tanaka has at least three more ekiden runs before her graduation in March, and if she can go her last ekiden season undefeated it will be a fitting end before she goes to the non-ekiden-oriented Doshisha University in April.

Japan's Team Performance at World U20 Championships

There wasn't much surprise in the events where Japan did well at the Oregon World U20 Championships , with medals in the men's 110 mH, 400 mH and 3000 m, and top 5 finishes in the women's and men's 5000 m race walks, men's 4x100 m relay, men's pole vault and long jump, men's 200 m, women's 800 m and 3000 m, and women's javelin throw. Jeremy Koga ran a 12.95 (+0.3) Asian U20 AR in the men's 110 mH semifinals, then came back in the final with a 12.97 (+0.7) in the final to take silver behind a brilliant 12.72 U20 WR by American Le'Ezra Brown . Taiju Goto was expected to medal in the men's 400 mH, but after leading the semifinals the best he could do was silver in 49.23, gold going to the Czech Republic's Michal Rada with a 48.59 European U20 AR. Expected to do better in the 1500 m, Ojiro Honda ran a 7:48.49 U20 NR in the men's 3000 m final to score bronze, only to come in near the back of the field in the 1500 m final at 14th in...

Federation Tells World Championships Marathoner Horibata To Go On Diet

http://hochi.yomiuri.co.jp/sports/etc/news/20110307-OHT1T00258.htm translated by Brett Larner Having made the 2011 World Championships marathon team by running a PB of 2:09:25 to come in 3rd overall and as the top Japanese finisher at the Mar. 6 Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon, Hiroyuki Horibata (24, Team Asahi Kasei), talked to the media at Osaka Airport on Mar. 7. Following Sunday's race Rikuren director Keisuke Sawaki , 67, told Horibata, "Let's cut things down a bit until the World Championships," directing him to go on a diet. The 189 cm Horibata weighs 72 kg [~6'3", 160 lbs]. When he joined Team Asahi Kasei in 2005 at age 18 he weighed 65 kg, and this weight is still generally listed on his profile at races and in the media. "For some reason it never changes," he said with a grin. His coach Takeshi Soh , 58, commented, "If he was hungrier for glory his world would change completely," slapping the 'heavyweight division runner...

Some Mid-Season Women's Corporate Team Roster Changes

The Daiichi Life women's corporate team announced last week on its official site that Paris Olympics 10000 m runner Haruka Kokai and teammate Yuka Masubuchi left the organization as of July 31. Kokai was born in 2003. Kokai rose to the national level while at Sendai Ikuei H.S. , winning the first leg at the National High School Ekiden her 2nd year to lead them to the overall national title. After graduating she joined Daiichi Life, then called Daiichi Seimei, in 2021. In March, 2023 she was the gold medalist in the women's 10000 m at the Asian Championships, and in December the same year she took 3rd in the National Championships 10000 m in an all-time Japanese #7 30:57.67 to score a place on the Paris Olympics team. In Paris she placed 19th. In a statement released by Daiichi Life Kokai said, "I want to thank the team, who always put the athletes first as they shared this journey, and all my teammates for so many good times together. There were times I got really disco...

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