video highlights via NHK
Two and a half weeks after delivering the standout performance of the 2019 Hakone Ekiden, Toyo University third-year Akira Aizawa did it again, just missing the stage record as he anchored the Fukushima team to its first-ever National Men's Ekiden title.
The season-ending national championship ekiden for Japanese men, the race features teams made up of the top junior high school, high school, university, club and pro runners from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, an entertaining format that often produces the national debuts of future stars from the next two generations alongside the best of the current one.
No team from the Tohoku region, Japan's northeastern area that was hit by the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, had ever won the National title before today. Fukushima started well in 4th, but over the next two stages it dropped to 12th as 3rd man Hiroki Abe, the only Japanese collegiate man to break 28 minutes for 10000 m last year and one of t…
Two and a half weeks after delivering the standout performance of the 2019 Hakone Ekiden, Toyo University third-year Akira Aizawa did it again, just missing the stage record as he anchored the Fukushima team to its first-ever National Men's Ekiden title.
The season-ending national championship ekiden for Japanese men, the race features teams made up of the top junior high school, high school, university, club and pro runners from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, an entertaining format that often produces the national debuts of future stars from the next two generations alongside the best of the current one.
No team from the Tohoku region, Japan's northeastern area that was hit by the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, had ever won the National title before today. Fukushima started well in 4th, but over the next two stages it dropped to 12th as 3rd man Hiroki Abe, the only Japanese collegiate man to break 28 minutes for 10000 m last year and one of t…