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Koku Gakuin University Wins 2nd-Straight Izumo Ekiden, Ivy League Takes Best-Ever 4th


Even with some big losses to graduation this year, defending champion Koku Gakuin University found a way to put together a winning lineup to take its 2nd-straight title at the season-opening Izumo Ekiden in Shimane.

Favorite Chuo University was expected to be looking at a landslide, but instead of riding it to a blowout win it found itself caught beneath one under sunny skies and hot temperatures. Chuo's lead runner Kaisei Okada ran away from the field on the 1st leg, but after him only one other of Chuo's five remaining runners did better than 7th of 22 on his stage and the team ended up 10th. Head coach Masakazu Fujiwara excels at development on the track, but this kind of result is exactly how Chuo went from ranked #1 two years ago to not making Izumo last year.

The fan pick to be a threat this year, Waseda University took over from Chuo on the 2nd leg with a win by Tomonori Yamaguchi, but after that it was a struggle to stay where they ultimately ended up in 2nd. Josai University was next to take the lead thanks to a win on the competitive 8.5 km 3rd leg by Victor Kimutai. It's really saying something that Kimutai took the stage win here given that he was up against collegiate 5000 m and 10000 m record holder Richard Etir of Tokyo Kokusai University and the best runner to ever line up in Izumo, Graham Blanks of the Ivy League Select Team.

But Koku Gakuin's Masamichi Nonaka also outran Etir and Blanks, moving KGU up from 5th to 2nd. A 17:20 CR on the 6.2 km 4th leg by Hikaru Tsujihara, really impressive given the hot conditions, put KGU into 1st, and its last two runners Goki Takayama and Ryuto Uehara kept it there. KGU's winning time of 2:09:12 was 12 seconds better than what it ran for the win last year, very impressive considering its losses to graduation and the heat. It may have the depth to pull something off at the 8-runner National University Ekiden next month, but as of it right now it may be short on top-tier talent to really contend at the 10-runner Hakone Ekiden come January.




Waseda pretty much lived up to fan hopes, taking 2nd in 2:09:50 thanks in part to a great anchor run by 1:00:06 half marathoner Shinsaku Kudo. Soka University anchor Yuma Nozawa was also brilliant, running down Ivy League anchor James Lawrence for 3rd in 2:10:05 by 7 seconds over the Ivies.

With its best-ever lineup the Ivy League's 4th-place finish was its best-ever, beating last year's 5th, and its time of 2:10:12 was also its best, over 2 minutes faster than what it ran for 5th last year. Blanks' head-to-head run against Kimutai and Nonaka, hard enough to leave him lying face-down on the road after he finished, was one of the highlights of the race. 5th runner Derek Amicon had an especially good run even though he was only 5th on stage time, moving the Ivies into 2nd before anchor Lawrence took over.

Missing star 4th-year Keita Sato, last year's 2nd-placer Komazawa University was mostly unremarkable, beating its pre-race ranking of 6th by one place to take 5th in 2:10:27. Josai also beat its pre-race ranking of 9th, placing 6th in 2:10:41. 3rd last year, Aoyama Gakuin University was only 7th, outside the top 10 most of the race and only clawing its way up over the last two stages thanks to stage wins by its last two runners Shota Shiode and collegiate marathon record holder Asahi Kuroda. A lot of teams stack their early lineups to stay up in it, but it's interesting that both AGU and winner KGU focused on the later stages of the race.

8th last year, #11-ranked Teikyo University was 8thg again in 2:11:32. Ranked 8th, Toyo University improved on last year's 11th-place finish in 9th in 2:12:06 over 30 seconds ahead of Chuo in 10th. #10-ranked Tokyo Kokusai looked set to make the 8-deep podium as it say in 7th with one stage to go, but anchor Ryusei Kawachi struggled in the heat, staggering in to the finish in 11th with the slowest time on the 10.2 km anchor stage, 35:15.

As expected, Kansai University took the top non-Kanto Region/Ivy League spot at 12th in 2:18:06, spending almost the entire race in 14th before a great anchor run from Shotaro Akiyama. Non-Kanto teams will get another shot at trying to beat even one Kanto Region team at the Nov. 2 National University Ekiden, but with even longer stages there their chances are even lower than they were in Izumo today.

In the alternates' 5000 m on the track post-ekiden, AGU 1st-year Ibuki Sugiyama took the top spot in 13:55.93, with Komazawa 3rd-year Kaisei Yasuhara 2nd in 13:57.75 and KGU 2nd-year Yuto Hananoki 3rd in 13:58.02. Swapped out on race morning, Ivy League alternates Talha Syed and William Laird were 12th and 21st in 14:29.51 and 14:51.61.

37th Izumo Ekiden

Izumo, Shimane, 13 October 2025
22 teams, 6 stages, 45.1 km

Team Results
1. Koku Gakuin University - 2:09:12
2. Waseda University - 2:09:50
3. Soka University - 2:10:05
4. Ivy League Select Team - 2:10:12
5. Komazawa University - 2:10:27
6. Josai University - 2:10:41
7. Aoyama Gakuin University - 2:10:52
8. Teikyo University - 2:11:32
9. Toyo University - 2:12:06
10. Chuo University - 2:12:43
11. Tokyo Kokusai University - 2:16:33
12. Kansai University - 2:18:06
13. Sapporo Gakuin University - 2:18:24
14. Shinshu University - 2:18:39
15. Shigakkan University - 2:19:31
16. Kantaiheiyo University - 2:19:58
17. Kogakkan University - 2:20:08
OP - Chugoku/Shikoku Region Select Team - 2:21:00
18. Kyoto Sangyo University - 2:21:12
19. Niigata University - 2:22:22
20. Tohoku Region Select Team - 2:22:37
21. Hokkaido University - 2:28:15

Top Individual Stage Results
First Stage - 8.0 km
1. Kaisei Okada (2nd yr., Chuo Univ.) - 23:28
2. Haru Taninaka (2nd yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 23:30
3. Yoshihiro Kusuoka (3rd yr., Teikyo Univ.) - 23:36
4. Takumi Orihashi (3rd yr., Soka Univ.) - 23:41
5. Rui Aoki (4th yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 23:42
-----
9. Ben Rosa (Ivy League) - 23:49

Second Stage - 5.8 km
1. Tomonori Yamaguchi (4th yr., Waseda Univ.) - 15:57
2. Yudai Kiyama (4th yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 16:23
3. Acer Iverson (Ivy League) - 16:25
4. Riki Koike (3rd yr., Soka Univ.) - 16:28
5. Ryuki Kobayashi (2nd yr., Josai Univ.) - 16:29

Third Stage - 8.5 km
1. Victor Kimutai (4th yr., Josai Univ.) - 23:40
2. Hiromichi Nonaka (3rd yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 23:49
3. Richard Etir (3rd yr., Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) - 23:54
4. Graham Blanks (Ivy League) - 23:59
5. Stephen Muthini (3rd yr., Soka Univ.) - 24:16

Fourth Stage - 6.2 km
1. Hikaru Tsujihara (3rd yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 17:20 - CR
2. Aoi Ito (4th yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 17:29
3. Junna Ishimaru (4th yr., Soka Univ.) - 17:32
4. Tyler Berg (Ivy League) - 17:35
5. Yudai Hara (3rd yr., Teikyo Univ.) - 17:39

Fifth Stage - 6.4 km
1. Shota Shiode (4th yr., Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 17:54
2. Goki Takayama (4th yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 17:58
3. Daisuke Sato (2nd yr., Chuo Univ.) - 18:07
4. Shoki Yamaguchi (2nd yr., Soka Univ.) - 18:09
5. Derek Amicon (Ivy League) - 18:10

Sixth Stage - 10.2 km
1. Asahi Kuroda (4th yr., Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 29:15
2. Takuma Yamakawa (4th yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 29:38
3. Shinsaku Kudo (3rd yr., Waseda Univ.) - 29:38
4. Ryuto Uehara (4th yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 29:53
5. Yuma Nozawa (4th yr., Soka Univ.) - 29:59
-----
8. James Lawrence (Ivy League) - 30:14

Alternates' 5000 m
1. Ibuki Sugiyama (1st yr., Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 13:55.93
2. Kaisei Yasuhara (3rd yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 13:57.74
3. Yuto Hananoki (2nd yr., Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 13:58.02
4. Keigo Amimoto (4th yr., Toyo Univ.) - 14:10.12
5. Kosuke Shimako (3rd yr., Komazawa Univ.) - 14:10.77
6. Yudai Fujimoto (4th yr., Teikyo Univ.) - 14:16.38
7. Hiroto Hishida (3rd yr., Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) - 14:17.58
8. Jinya Ozaki (4th yr., Teikyo Univ.) - 14:22.43
9. Jun Tanaka (3rd yr., Toyo Univ.) - 14:25.04
10. Kosei Sakamoto (M1, Kansai Univ.) - 14:27.62
-----
12. Talha Syed (Ivy League) - 14:29.21
21. William Laird (Ivy League) - 14:51.61

text and photo © 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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Comments

Anonymous said…
I didn't have Koku Gakuin as my favourite with the guys they lost after last year but good group effort to take the win.
Izumo is often difficult to predict as it's very different to Hakone in terms of leg distances and I wonder (and I think it should be necessary if Japan wants to improve in worldwide competitions) if Hakone teams will start developing shorter distances runners to run specifically this event.

Like I said before the race, I never know what to expect from Chuo, the pattern of their results never makes sense. Reminds me a bit of the last 3-4 years of Juntendo, very inconsistent.
It's clear they are completely off form, and it's hard to figure out if it's just still because of the workload looking ahead at Hakone or they just flat out botched the summer preparation. We'll get to know a bit more in 3 weeks for the All-Japan with leg distances closer to the Hakone ones.

Waseda confirms they are on the way up, still a long way to go and they need to be tested with longer distances but encouraging for them. Komazawa (they miss Sato in a big way) and AGU ran as expected, All Japan will be a good test for both.
Soka has been solid as they often are.

We'll know more in 3 weeks about the trajectories of these teams, was a fun ekiden though.
October 14, 2025 at 1:34 AM
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