japan running news

Entry lists are out for the world's biggest running event, the Jan. 2-3 HakoneEkiden university men's championships. Aoyama Gakuin University has built a near monopoly on Hakone, winning the last four years and looking this year to follow Chuo University and Nittai University as the third team in Hakone's 95 years of history to win it five years straight. But with its weakest lineup since 2015, the year AGU first rose to Hakone dominance, that won't be easy.

Using the chart above from JRN's January, 2016 article "The Shape of Things to Come" which predicted the breakthrough we've seen this year in Japanese men's marathoning based on the last 20 years of Hakone results, we've ranked the 23 teams in the 2019 Hakone Ekiden based on the combined scores of the 10 best runners on each team's 16-man entry roster.
The Win 1. Tokai University - 70 pts.
2. Komazawa University - 69 pts.
3. Teikyo University - 62 pts.
4. Aoyama Gakuin University - 61 …

In response to a tabloid magazine's claims that Komazawa University president Hachiro Hasebe and others had called for the resignation of ekiden team head coach Hiroaki Oyagi, Komazawa announced on Nov. 27 that it will establish a third-party investigatory committee. "The committee will ascertain the facts of the situation and respond with appropriate severity," said the statement.

According to the gossip rag's report, in July President Hasebe's group asked Coach Oyagi to resign over financial irregularities that had come to light. Oyagi is said to have responded by calling the internal audit and demand for him to resign power harassment.

Komazawa University has won the Hakone Ekiden six times under Oyagi's leadership. Last time it finished only 12th, but at October's qualifying race it took the top spot by a wide margin and at the Nov. 4 National University Men's Ekiden it was a strong 4th.

source article:
https://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics…

It's Sunday, June 24. At the western end of Japan's main island of Honshu the competition at the Yamaguchi National Track and Field Championships has been heating up. On this day alone, the final day of the Championships, the national records have fallen in both the men's 110 m hurdles and men's discus throw. On the very same day, far to the northeast of Yamaguchi at Lake Saroma, Hokkaido, another new record was born. After standing for 20 years, the 100 km ultramarathon world record has finally fallen. The man who accomplished this deed is Nao Kazami (Aisan Kogyo).

The previous world record of 6:13:33 was set at Lake Saroma by Takahiro Sunada (Sekisui Kagaku) in 1998. Kazami improved that mark by more than four minutes with a new record of 6:09:14.  "I was targeting place more than time," said Kazami of the race where he needed to finish in the top four to have a chance of being selected for the Japanese national team for this year's Croatia World Champ…

October's Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the official qualifying race for Japan's biggest race, has for decades been by a massive margin the world's #1 20 km road race. Beginning this year organizers have announced changes to its format including a shift from 20 km to the half marathon distance, positioning the Yosenkai to join November's Ageo City Half Marathon and March's National University Half Marathon Championships as one of the world's deepest and most competitive half marathons.

The Inter-University Athletic Union of Kanto [KGRR], organizers of the Jan.. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden, have announced that the length of the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying race will be extended from the traditional 20 km to a half marathon beginning with this year's 95th edition on Oct. 13. The start and finish at Showa Kinen Park and the neighboring Air Defense Force base in Tachikawa, Tokyo will remain the same. Organizers are still considering various plans for making up the extra d…

by Brett Larner
follow @JRNLive for live coverage of the 2016 Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 2 and 3


The Hakone Ekiden Museum divides the history of one of the world's three great races into distinct eras.  According to the Museum, the Hakone Ekiden's fourth era began at last year's 91st running with Aoyama Gakuin University's inspired and inspiring win.  A young outsider coach, Sususu Hara, with a new approach to building a team radiating not just talent but positivity and a love of what they're doing.  A star runner, Daichi Kamino, whose uphill Fifth Stage run guaranteed Aoyama Gakuin the win and turned himself and the rest of the team into national celebrities for the tens of millions of fans who watched the live broadcast and turned out along the course.  A sheer depth of quality that indicated that Hara's development and organizational practices did indeed mark the start of something new.

In the year since then, a year that Hara targeted as the culmination of his p…

by Brett Larner



After record-setting races at the Izumo Ekiden and Hakone Ekiden Qualifier earlier this month, university men’s ekiden season keeps rolling with the weekend’s biggest race, the second of the Big Three University Ekidens, Sunday’s National University Men’s Ekiden Championships. Defending champion Komazawa University returns with four-straight titles and twelve wins in the last seventeen years behind it, but even Komazawa head coach Hiroaki Oyagi admits that this is Aoyama Gakuin University’s year.

Aoyama Gakuin ended last season with a course record-breaking win at the Hakone Ekiden and has only gotten stronger since then, all in line with head coach Susumu Hara’s long-term development plan for Aoyama Gakuin to become the best in Japan this season with the full maturing of his core group of seniors. At the Oct. 12 Izumo Ekiden Aoyama Gakuin ran six seconds faster than Komazawa’s course record despite a 600 m longer course, effectively two minutes faster minus the ex…

http://www.hochi.co.jp/sports/etc/20150301-OHT1T50255.html

translated and edited by Brett Larner

Now an assistant coach at the Fujitsu corporate team where he spent his professional career, former marathon national record holder Atsushi Fujita, 38, will return to his alma mater, 2011-2014 National University Men's Ekiden champion Komazawa University, in April to take a position as assistant coach.  Fujita has already been coaching at Komazawa twice a week but as of the start of the new academic and fiscal year in April he will leave Fujitsu and become an employee of Komazawa to focus all of his energy into helping develop the country's top collegiate talent.  "It's a great responsibility," Fujita said, facing his new position with full seriousness.

As a student at Komazawa Fujita ran the Hakone Ekiden all four years from 1996 through 1999.  As a senior he broke the course record on Hakone's competitive Fourth Stage prior to its shortening to its current length…

http://www.komaspo.com/4956

translated and edited by Brett Larner

With one month to go until the 2015 Hakone Ekiden, the Komazawa University sports department held a school rally for its 2011-2014 national champion ekiden team on Dec. 2 at the Komazawa Campus Memorial Hall.  Comments from team staff and seniors:

Hiroaki Oyagi, head coach
Our second place finish last time was disappointing and frustrating.  In our year of development since then we've looked at this as our season to be the best, and we're going in with the will to win no matter what.  The athletes share the same feeling and have been deliberate in their approach over the last two years.  This team has the ability to win the most important race, the one they absolutely must win.  For the next month we will only be thinking about bringing home our first win in seven years as we make our final preparations, and we ask for your continued support.

Shogo Nakamura, senior, captain
Personally I haven't been able to run…

by Brett Larner

update: Alternates have been confirmed for the final start list.  As expected, Komazawa's Kenta Murayama will be on First Stage and Toyo's Yuma Hattori on Second (see below).

The weekend's biggest race next to the TCS New York City Marathon is Sunday's National University Men's Ekiden, an 8-stage, 106.8 race from Nagoya to Ise pitting the 14 best universities in the Kanto Region against the 12 best from the rest of the country in the second stop on the Big Three University Ekiden tour that leads to Japan's biggest sporting event, the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden.  With the first of the Big Three, October's Izumo Ekiden, having been cancelled this season thanks to a major typhoon and big performances at the Yosenkai 20 km Hakone qualifier, where the field set new world records for depth and Josai University senior Kota Murayama ran the fastest-ever time there by a Japanese athlete, 58:26, it's safe to say that the millions of college distance r…

by Brett Larner

Defending national champion Komazawa University returns as the favorite for Sunday's 45th edition of the National University Men's Ekiden Championships, eight stages of road action covering the 106.8 km from Nagoya to Ise.  Last year Komazawa set a new course record of 5:12:43 to take a record tenth national title under head coach Hiroaki Oyagi.  This year its chances of adding to that legacy look good after a course record win three weeks ago at the first of the Big Three university ekidens, the Izumo Ekiden.  At that point all Komazawa's cylinders looked to be firing, and with longer average stage lengths Nationals should again play to the champions' strengths if the team has maintained peak fitness and can complement its Izumo squad with two more equally strong members.

Its main competition is a familiar group of schools led by Toyo University, runner-up at both the 2012 Nationals and this year's Izumo with 2013 Hakone Ekiden champion Nittai Univ…