#3-ranked Komazawa University came on strong over the second half of the National University Ekiden to take a record 17th national title, more than any other program in the national championship race's 57-year history.
It had its share of dominant single-stage runs, but more than that this year's Komazawa lineup was consistent across the board, the only school to put all 8 of its runners into the top 5 on their stages, all but 2 of them in the top 3. Over the first 2 legs it was never more than 3 seconds out of 1st, moving up into that position by 1 seconds on the 3rd leg with a good run from 4th-year Yudai Kiyama. 3rd-year Kaisei Yasuhara was the weakest link with only the 5th-best time on the 4th leg, dropping Komazawa back to 4th and 35 seconds behind #2-ranked Chuo University's Daichi Shibata.
But on the next leg Komazawa 4th-year Aoi Ito turned it back around with the biggest run at this year's Nationals, running 35:01 for the 12.4 km 5th leg, 17 seconds under its old CR and an incredible 1:25 faster than the next-best runner on the stage, Arata Iguni from #1-ranked and defending national champ Koku Gakuin University. That put Komazawa 52 seconds out front, and from there its lead only got bigger. 6th runner Hibiki Murakami extended it to 1:04. Star 4th-year Keita Sato took it to 1:57 in a comeback run from injury. Anchor Takuma Yamakawa edged it out further to 2:01, bringing Komazawa home for the win in 5:06:53 for the 106.8 km course, just 7 seconds off its own overall CR from 2022.
Up to where Ito blew it apart it was a pretty interesting race up front, with most of the favorites close together excluding 2025 Hakone Ekiden CR breaker Aoyama Gakuin University. Akito Nakamura from the local Shigakkan University turned heads by beating all the Hakone schools to win the 1st leg. Yoshihiro Kusuoka did the same with a 31:01 for the 11.1 km 2nd leg, tying Sato's CR. After finishing 10th at the Izumo Ekiden last month while being ranked #1, Chuo showed up in force this time, briefly taking the lead on the 2nd leg thanks to a great run from 4th year Shunsuke Yamato, and it spent the rest of the race dueling with defending champ KGU. It ultimately won that battle, living up to its pre-race ranking with a 2nd-place finish behind Komazawa in 5:08:54.
KGU looked set for 3rd, but you never really know until it's done. In the double-digit places in the early going, AGU came back hard with two big late-stage runs. 2nd-year Kaito Iida had the top time on the 6th leg, moving AGU into 5th and setting up collegiate marathon record holder Asahi Kuroda to go to town. Which he did, breaking the CR on the 17.6 km 7th leg by 7 seconds to run down everyone except Komazawa's Sato. But Chuo and KGU anchors Itta Tameike and Ryuto Uehara both caught AGU's Hikaru Ogawara to bump the Hakone champ back to 4th.
The finishing order was pretty much locked in, but with just a few km to go KGU's Uehara, a 1:00:30 half marathoner, suddenly tied up with cramps, holding his side as Ogawara went by again to take 3rd in 5:09:28. Uehara brought the defending champs home a few seconds later in 5:09:45 for 4th.
Powered in part by Kusuoka's CR tie on the 2nd leg and a great run from 7th man Teruki Shimada, #6-ranked Teikyo was on track to finish 5th. But Izumo runner-up Waseda University had something to say about that. Anchor Shinsaku Kudo, this year's World University Games half marathon gold medalist with a 1:00:06 PB, delivered the race's other great run, running the anchor stage's fastest time, 56:54 for 19.7 km, to overtake Teikyo's Yuta Asakawa for 5th. Apart from Komazawa it was the best team performance out of the day, beating Waseda's pre-race ranking of 13th by 8 places.
Kudo's 56:54 was a far cry from the 55:32 CR set by Kenyan Mekubo Mogusu 18 years ago, but it was still historic. Kudo outran one of Waseda's most famous alumni, Yasuyuki Watanabe, beating Watanabe's 1995 mark of 56:59 that had stood for 30 years as the fastest-ever on the Nationals anchor stage by a Japanese-born runner.
Teikyo was 6th in 5:10:56, 35 seconds behind Waseda. #4-ranked Soka University was never better than 5th and ultimately ended up 7th in 5:11:56. With the top 8 scoring places at next year's Nationals the race for 8th was mostly between #10-ranked Juntendo University and #14-ranked Nittai University, who exchange positions multiple times. But Juntendo anchor Yuto Kobayashi got it done, making up an 11-second deficit behind Nittai and landing 8th in 5:14:33. #12-ranked Josai University and #7 Nihon University both ran Nittai down too, going 9-10-11 with just 25 seconds separating them.
Tokai University, Daito Bunka University and Rikkyo University took the next 3 spots, all of them struggling to make the quick turnaround from the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying race 2 weeks ago. DBU had the weakest team performance of the day, coming in ranked 8th but finishing only 13th.
Yosenkai winner Chuo Gakuin University was 15th in 5:19:52 to make it a clean sweep of the top 15 spots by the 15 Kanto Region teams in the field of 27. Even the 16th team to finish, the National Select Team, included Kanto Region runners, and the best non-Kanto team, Kansai University finished almost 9 minutes behind CGU. Every non-Kanto team got white sashed on the final exchange for falling over 20 minutes behind the leader, essentially making it two races in one, a varsity race up front for the Kanto Region and JV race a few kilometers back for the rest of the country. That's what Hakone does to collegiate men's running.
Looking to Hakone 2 months away, the most obvious thing was that AGU is going to be a major threat again. They're down on strength this year after losing most of their best people to graduation, but looking at how much better they did here with longer stages and more runners than at Izumo, and at coach Susumu Hara's overriding prioritization of January's big show, they're not going to go down that easily.
Sato's comeback played a massive part in Komazawa's win here even though he was nowhere near full fitness. If he can avoid re-injury for the next 2 months then he's going to exert gravitational pull on Hakone's flow. AGU is more heavily dependent on its star runner than Komazawa, but both of them need 2 more people to perform at the same level in order to take Hakone. It's going to be good.
Chuo always has a great lineup, but even though it put it together today, as we saw at Izumo, it's just not stable enough to really be a reliable contender. KGU also has a great lineup this year, even with the problems later in the race. Chuo replicating today and KGU working out the kinks could make for a legendary 4-way race in January. Waseda doesn't look to have the depth to handle adding another 2 people to its starting roster, making a top 5 placing for Teikyo realistic. Beyond that, we'll see.
57th National University Ekiden
Nagoya-Mie, 2 Nov. 2025
27 teams, 8 stages, 106.8 km
Team Results
1. Komazawa University - 5:06:53
2. Chuo University - 5:08:54
3. Aoyama Gakuin University - 5:09:28
4. Koku Gakuin University - 5:09:45
5. Waseda University - 5:10:21
6. Teikyo University - 5:10:56
7. Soka University - 5:11:56
8. Juntendo University - 5:14:33
----- top 8 seeded for 2026
9. Josai University - 5:15:26
10. Nihon University - 5:15:37
11. Nittai University - 5:15:51
12. Tokai University - 5:17:16
13. Daito Bunka University - 5:18:27
14. Rikkyo University - 5:18:51
15. Chuo Gakuin University - 5:19:52
OP - National Select Team - 5:23:19
16. Kansai University - 5:28:32
17. Osaka Keizai University - 5:29:38
18. Kwansei Gakuin University - 5:30:05
19. Sapporo Gakuin University - 5:30:38
20. Nagoya University - 5:32:25
21. Gifu Kyoritsu University - 5:33:47
22. Shigakkan University - 5:36:07
23. Shinshu University - 5:36:11
OP - Tokai Region Select Team - 5:36:52
24. Hiroshima Keizai University - 5:37:37
25. Tohoku Gakuin University - 5:54:02
Top Individual Stage Performances
First Stage (9.5 km)
1. Akito Nakamura (Shigakkan Univ.) - 27:20
2. Junpei Maseda (Waseda Univ.) - 27:20
3. Hayato Oguma (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 27:21
4. Shoya Koyama (Komazawa Univ.) - 27:21
5. Keisuke Ogino (Nittai Univ.) - 27:22
Second Stage (11.1 km)
1. Yoshihiro Kusuoka (Teikyo Univ.) - 31:01 - CR tie
2. Shunsuke Yoshii (Chuo Univ.) - 31:07
3. Haru Taninaka (Komazawa Univ.) - 31:14
4. Rui Suzuki (Waseda Univ.) - 31:15
5. Riki Koike (Soka Univ.) - 31:22
Third Stage (11.9 km)
1. Hiromichi Nonaka (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 33:11
2. Victor Kimutai (Josai Univ.) - 33:12
3. Yudai Kiyama (Komazawa Univ.) - 33:38
4. Daichi Fujita (Chuo Univ.) - 33:42
5. Stephen Muthini (Soka Univ.) - 33:44
Fourth Stage (11.8 km)
1. Daichi Shibata (Chuo Univ.) - 33:52
2. Goki Takayama (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 33:54
3. Sota Taniguchi (Teikyo Univ.) - 34:00
4. Takumi Orihashi (Soka Univ.) - 34:11
5. Kaisei Yasuhara (Komazawa Univ.) - 34:28
Fifth Stage (12.4 km)
1. Aoi Ito (Komazawa Univ.) - 35:01 - CR
2. Arata Iguni (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 36:26
3. Yuto Miyake (Chuo Univ.) - 36:33
4. Yuichi Sato (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 36:34
5. Ryuto Kawahara (Juntendo Univ.) - 36:55
Sixth Stage (12.8 km)
1. Kaito Iida (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 37:20
2. Hibiki Murakami (Komazawa Univ.) - 37:22
3. Daisuke Sato (Chuo Univ.) - 37:29
4. Yuta Asano (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 37:35
5. Hiroyuki Ishioka (Juntendo Univ.) - 37:43
Seventh Stage (17.6 km)
1. Asahi Kuroda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) - 49:31 - CR
2. Shadrack Kipkemoi (Nihon Univ.) - 50:17
3. Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.) - 50:26
4. Tomonori Yamaguchi (Waseda Univ.) - 50:57
5. Teruki Shimada (Teikyo Univ.) - 51:17
Eighth Stage (19.7 km)
1. Shinsaku Kudo (Waseda Univ.) - 56:54
2. Itta Tameike (Chuo Univ.) - 57:03
3. Takuma Yamakawa (Komazawa Univ.) - 57:23
4. Ryuto Uehara (Koku Gakuin Univ.) - 57:25
5. Shoya Saito (Josai Univ.) - 57:32
© 2025 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
Comments
Would have loved to be able to watch Shigakkan moment of glory on stage 1 and all that unfolded afterwards.
Asahi Kuroda proved again he is a top guy with a great CR on a stage where last year Shinohara, Ota and Hirabayashi put on a show: 30-40 seconds faster than them.
I don't know what to say about Chuo as they are completely unpredictable. They were good here, very bad at Izumo, who knows how they'll show up in 2 months at Hakone.
Komazawa to my eyes are the definiteion of reliability across all the 3 big ekidens.
Koku Gakuin needs to fine tune some stuff but gotta say they really worked very well the past few years.
From the article, looking ahead to Hakone I agree with your assestment, it could be a multiple teams battle this time.
Komazawa will do well, needs Sato to improve for the team to take the next level.
AGU will perform but they didn't just lose good runners: they lost the 3 best all time japanese runners on their respective stages (Ota, Wakabayashi, Nomura) and 2 of those guys set massive CR on the critical 5th and 6th stage, it will be a much different approach for them this time.
I agree about Koku Gakuin and Chuo.
Waseda will be interesting at Hakone I think: Kudo ran great today again and last year was the only guy who wasn't complitely obliterated by Wakabayashi on the 5th stage. If he repeats his performacne there they may have a big ace to gain massively compared to everyone else. They don't have depth probably but could make it a very fun 1st Hakone day.
If Teiyko gets in the mix too, we party even more.
2 months to go and at the moment is all very unpredictable, likely will be a bit slower Hakone Ekiden this year but should be a fantastic battle.