japan running news

After winning the Morinomiyako Ekiden for the first time in October, Josai University pulled off the double in an anchor stage battle against Tohoku Fukushi University and Daito Bunka University with all three going for their first-ever Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national title. 2024 Morinomiyako and Mt. Fuji double champ Ritsumeikan University got off to a good start with a stage win from lead runner Yua Sato but plummeted to 9th when star 3rd-year Sayuki Ota was only 16th of 24 on the Second Stage. From there it was all Ritsumeikan could do to hang on to a place in the top 5, the same as its result in Morinomiyako this year. In its place, Josai went to the front off a CR of 20:36 for the 6.8 km Second Stage by 1st-year Kyo Honma to go with her opening leg CR at Morinomiyako. It stayed out front until the longest leg of the race, the 10.5 km Fifth Stage, where Sarah Wanjiru of perpetual runner-up DBU easily turned a 47-second deficit into a 47-second lead and Nazuki Sasaki ...

The Hakone Ekiden is the world's biggest road race, 2 days of road relay action with Japan's 20 best university teams racing 10 half marathon-scale legs from central Tokyo to the mountains east of Mount Fuji and back. The level just keeps going higher and higher , hitting the point this year where there are teams with 10-runner averages of 13:33.10 for 5000 m, 27:55.98 for 10000 m, and 1:01:20 for the half marathon. It's never been better, and with great weather in the forecast it's safe to say this could be one of the best races in Hakone's 102-year history, especially on Day One. If you've seen it then you know NTV's live broadcast is the best sports broadcast in the world, with the pre-race show kicking off at 7:00 a.m. Japan time on the 2nd and 3rd and the race starting at 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you've got a VPN you should be able to watch it on TVer starting at 7:50 a.m. on the 2nd , and again at 7:50 a.m. on the 3rd . There's even a 2-hour high...

After a day off for New Year's Eve, the peak of championship ekiden season rolls on first thing on Jan. 1 with the 70th edition of the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship race. The top 40 teams in the country race 100.0 km in 7 legs in Gunma, starting at 9:15 a.m. sharp on New Year's Day. Unedited raw camera feeds from the live broadcast will be streamed live on Youtube above starting at 9:10 a.m., with the official TBS broadcast starting at 8:30 a.m. and streaming of the broadcast on TVer . During the race live results will be posted here . Every team has to requalify for the New Year Ekiden by running one of the 6 regional corporate ekidens in early November. Usually they're pretty similar in length and elevation change at around 80 km, making a rough comparison of where teams stand fairly straightforward. This time the East Japan race was only 74.6 km and the Kyushu race 89.3 km, meaning that going by average pace the East Japan teams had an advant...

Next up in championship ekiden season is the Dec. 30 Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden , the national title race for Japan's collegiate women and the start of 4 days of top-tier ekiden action over the course of 5 days. Fuji TV has the live broadcast starting at 9:55 a.m. local time on the 30th, with free streaming on TVer if you're in Japan or have a VPN. October's Morinomiyako Ekiden saw a shift in the balance of power, with the Kanto Region's Josai University and Daito Bunka University going 1-2 over Tokai region powerhouse Meijo University , the Tohoku region's Tohoku Fukushi University 4th, and 2024 national champion Ritsumeikan University from Kansai only 5th. Josai, DBU, Meijo and TFU were only 34 seconds apart over the 6-stage, 38.0 km course, so in a longer and more technical race like Mt. Fuji, 7 stages totaling 43.4 km with some serious hills punctuated by a 169 m ascent on the 8.3 km anchor stage, it's too close to call. The big question for Josai is...

It's been a busy year, and a record-breaking one that kicked off with a Hakone Ekiden CR by Aoyama Gakuin University and ended with a new men's marathon NR from Suguru Osako . JRN's 10-most read stories of 2025: Tokyo World Championships to Leave Final Decision on Going Ahead in Heat to World Athletics - Aug. 25 After fears of hot conditions were used as a justification to move the Tokyo Olympics marathons to Sapporo, concern was high about the conditions at September's Tokyo World Championships. Ultimately, though, it wasn't much of an issue, with longer distance events being moved slightly earlier in the mornings on which they were scheduled. Australian Male Arrested on Drug Smuggling Charges After Entering Japan for Osaka Marathon - Apr. 10 Australian business owner Matthew Inglis Fox who had come to Japan to run the Osaka Marathon was arrested on suspicion of illegally importing cannabis products. After several months of confinement Fox returned to his home...

Alongside the National High School Girls Ekiden , the Nittai University Women's Long Distance Time Trials meet and Sanyo Ladies Road Race 10 km and half marathon made it a busy weekend for women's running in Japan. At Nittai, Momoka Kawaguchi (Uniqlo) was just off her PB in the 5000 m, winning the A-heat in 15:26.59 by almost 20 seconds over teammate Yume Goto . Nokoka Hosaka (SID Group) took the 3000 m A-heat in 9:25.42, leading the top 5 under 9:30. At Sanyo, a lead group of 4 went through 5 km in 16:09 in the 10 km before Lucy Nduta (Ehime Ginko) threw in a massive surge to win in a negative split 31:49. Janet Nyiva (Panasonic) held steady for 2nd in 32:17, with Mao Uesugi (Tokyo Metro) fading slightly but holding off the fast-closing Hikaru Kitagawa (Universal Entertainment) for 3rd 32:38 to 32:41. Part of the original lead quartet, Daisy Jerop (Josai Kokusai Univ.) blew up big time in the 2nd half, finishing 16th in 33:34. Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) just misse...

Like girls' race winner Nagano Higashi H.S. , Fukushima's Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. boys took the lead on the first leg of the National High School Ekiden and held it the rest of the way, taking 24 seconds off the CR to win their first-ever national title in an incredible 2:00:36 for 42.195 km in 7 legs. Yota Mashiko led off by slicing 23 seconds off the fastest-ever time by a Japanese-born athlete on the 10.0 km opening stage, outrunning main rival Haruki Niizuma of Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. by 20 seconds to take the stage title in 28:20. Second runner Hirotaka Wakata lost 5 seconds, but a stage win on the Third Stage from Ryo Kurimura put Gakuho Ishikawa up to 54 seconds ahead of its toughest competition, Sendai Ikuei H.S. Its next two runners Shunto Sato and Ikumi Sueda took 3rd on their stages, losing some ground to Sendai Ikuei but raising the prospect of something that hadn't been seriously considered before. When Sueda handed off to 6th runner Mahiro Hoashi Gakuho I...

The Nagano Higashi H.S. girls pulled off a perfect repetition of their start-to-finish win at last year's National High School Ekiden , taking the lead on the first leg again this time and never letting go. Opening runner Nami Kawakami won the 6.0 km First Stage by 2 seconds in 19:06, 2nd runner Haruna Tabata extended it to 12 seconds, and 3rd runner Airi Mashiba added another 30 seconds to the lead with a massive 9:06 CR for the 3.0 km leg, beating every Kenyan on the stage and everyone who had run it before. Nagano Higashi's last 2 runners Yui Honda and Rena Imai both lost some ground, but with both of them still running the 3rd-fastest times on their stages there wasn't really any risk of anyone catching them. Imai brought Nagano Higashi home in 1:06:30 for the 21.0975 km course, just missing the overall CR by 4 seconds but still a dominant performance from an all-Japanese lineup. 3rd last year, Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. got off to a slow start but spend the ...

https://worldathletics.org/news/news/emmanuel-kiprop-kipruto-suspension A very interesting and groundbreaking case involving  Emmanuel Kiprop Kipruto , who was a member of Asahi Kasei 's 2025 New Year Ekiden national champion team. Sure to be the first of many such cases. The timing of this decision 13 days out from the 2026 New Year Ekiden is probably not a coincidence.

The top Japanese finisher in the 2024 Paris Olympics women's marathon at 6th, Yuka Suzuki , 26, announced this week on her social media that she has left the Daiichi Seimei corporate team to transfer to Kraftia . "I'm really grateful to everyone who's helped me get where I am, and I know it's a level not everyone can get to," she wrote. Suzuki joined Daiichi Seimei in 2022 after graduating from Daito Bunka University . "The last few years I came to realize how incredible the fan support is in the corporate leagues and at the Olympics," she wrote. "My memories of the MGC Race and Paris Olympics really stand out. Even when the weather wasn't great or the race was far away there were always people there to cheer for me. That's not something you should take for granted, and I want to take the time to put my thanks to all of you into words." Talking about what comes next, Suzuki wrote, "I had a lot of options, and I wanted to be in...

The 33rd National Junior High School Ekiden took place in Shiga's Kibogaoka Bunka Park, with boys running 18 km in 6 legs and girls 12 km in 5 legs. Making Nationals for the first time, Gunma's Kise J.H.S. won the boys's race, while Okayama's Kyoyama J.H.S. became only the 3rd school in event history to pull off a threepeat. Ryunosuke Ideta (Chukyo J.H.S.), winner of the boys' 3000 m at last summer's Okinawa National Junior High School Track and Field Championships, and girls' 1500 m champ Aika Koreeda (Utsube J.H.S.) both raced, the first time in 17 years that the winners of both the boys' and girls' long-distance events ran at the National Junior High School Ekiden. Both ran up to potential and won their stages. Running the First Stage, Koreeda came to Nationals with a solid season since her national title on the track, winning at the National Sports Festival U16 and taking her 3000 m PB down to 9:34.44. Even with all the other schools' be...

Pretty much every year I write something about how the level of the college athletes at the Hakone Ekiden just keeps going up and up. This year too, the performances by collegiate men at February's Marugame Half and last month's string of 10000 m time trial meets were off the charts. There's got to be a peak somewhere, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close. How much have things really progressed? Let's take a quick look at the level of the fields at some of the Hakones since 2005. That year there were 19 college teams and one select team, so for the sake of consistency these numbers represent the top 19-ranked teams in the field at each Hakone. With Hakone happening on Jan. 2-3 every year, the listed years are the Hakone year, with the performances listed happening in the calendar year before that. Progression in the 5000 m from 2005 to 2020 was pretty steady, the largest jump happening between 2005 and 2010 at about 3 sec/km. After almost no change from...