japan running news

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship kicks off 2025 early, with streaming starting at 9:00 a.m. local time January 1st and the race going off at 9:15. At 7 legs totaling 100 km it's the peak of the year for the corporate leagues, the reason they have teams and bring in Kenyans. Last year Toyota led from the Second Stage to the finish, outrunning 2022-2023 winner Honda and 2017-2020 winner Asahi Kasei to take the national title for the first time since 2016. How is Toyota looking this year? On the one hand they've picked up fresh incoming talent like last year's Komazawa University captain Mebuki Suzuki . On the other, some of its key players like Tomoki Ota and Ren Tazawa have been dealing with injury, and at November's Chubu Region qualifying race Toyota lost by a minute to Toyota Boshoku , who broke the Chubu CR. A lot of Honda's A-list was missing from its lineup at the East Japan Region qualifying race , where it was only 7th out...

The Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden is the only major championship ekiden that doesn't give podium placers auto-qualification for the next year, forcing corporate men's teams to run the regional qualifiers every November and impacting runners' ability to do a fall marathon. The Olympic marathon trials 3 weeks ago impacted the dynamic this time, as any team that had had someone at the Trials and finished its regional qualifier would make the New Year Ekiden regardless of whether it finished in the bracket. That didn't really come into play much at the Kyushu Region Corporate Ekiden in Fukuoka, where 7 of the 9 teams in contention for 8 qualifying spots had people at the Trials. Kurosaki Harima led start to finish, its lead duo Yusuke Tamura and Sitonik Kiprono both winning their stages to give the team a 31 second lead. Traditional power Asahi Kasei came on strong in the middle of the race with stage wins from Takashi Ichida and Ryo Saito and an excellent new CR of 31:18 fo...

The first big race of the year worldwide every year is the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships, 100 km in 7 stages through Gunma northwest of Tokyo. TBS broadcasts it live domestically starting at 8:30 a.m. local on Jan. 1, with the broadcast to be streamed live on TVer . TBS will also be streaming live, unedited feeds from three different camera trucks too starting at 9:00 a.m. You'll probably need a VPN to get around geoblocking for both TVer and the unedited feed above. Live results will be here , and JRN will be covering the race live on @JRNLive  and Instagram to help you make sense of what's going on, and on the ground from the course. Buy us a coffee to help make the first of three straight days of live ekiden coverage possible. Last year the Honda team won for the first time in the race's 66-year history. Anchor Hidekazu Hijikata promptly jumped ship for CR holder Asahi Kasei , a product of 2020 rule changes around restrictions on team ...

The first two regional qualifiers for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships happened Nov. 3 in Saitama and Kyushu. At the East Japan Race in Saitama, 2021 New Year Ekiden winner Fujitsu outran 2022 champ Honda by 40 seconds for 1st. Honda started and finished strong with stages wins from its lead and anchor runners Hideto Kosode and Naoki Koyama , but Fujitsu had a solid lineup mid-race led by a stage record win on the Fourth Stage by Ken Yokote that gave it the lead it needed for the win. Most of the big names qualified without any surprises. Local supermarket chain Sunbelx did surprise, spending much of the race as high as 3rd before finishing an excellent 5th overall. Down near the 12th-place cutoff for New Year qualification, Saitama Ika Daigaku Group had a nail-biter as it dueled with the Comodi Iida supermarket team, ND Software and Komori Corporation to stay in the ring for its second-ever qualification. Despite a sub-par run from #1 man...

Thursday's public holiday is the traditional date for the East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden , the first of the regional qualifiers for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship. The New Year Ekiden is the only one of the major championship ekidens without a seeded bracket guaranteeing top-placing teams a spot at the next year's race, something that forces every corporate men's team to run the regional qualifier right in the middle of fall marathon season. Liberalizing that setup would have a measurable effect on men's marathoning, but like everything else in Japan vested financial interests and politics keep things the way they are. This year the East Japan race, which covers the greater Tokyo area and further north, returns to the roads of rural Saitama for 76.9 km in 7 stages after spending the pandemic on a loop course inside a park in the city of Kumagaya. 31 teams are entered, a massive increase due to the move to allow club teams to...

The level at the Hakone Ekiden just keeps going up and up.  Every year it seems like it can't go any further, and then it does. 3 stages this year had new course records, 9 out of 10 legs had at least one all-time top 10 mark, and 4 stages had 4 times inside their best-ever 10. In the absolute sense, shoes have played a part in that over the last few years, but in a relative sense the best college teams have at least equalled the top of the corporate leagues, and the teams behind them are getting closer and closer to the same level. At this year's 98th running on Jan. 2 and 3  Aoyama Gakuin University broke its own course record to make it 6 wins in 8 years. AGU clocked 10:43:42 for the complete 10-stage, 217.1 km course, an average of 2:57.9/km the entire way. How does that compare to Honda , which won the New Year Ekiden corporate men's championships on Jan. 1? Honda ran 4:51:04 for the 7-stage, 100.0 km course, averaging 2:54.6/km over an average 14.3 km stage lengt...

It's a fast new world in Japanese men's marathoning, and one of its exciting new stars comes to it straight out of Kyushu. His name is Kyohei Hosoya  (25, Kurosaki Harima). In just his second marathon he ran 2:06:35 for 3rd at February's Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon , ranking him at all-time Japanese #6. In college he was mostly sidelined with injury, but since joining the corporate leagues his abilities have come into full flower. Now, with the 2024 Paris Olympics in his sights, he's poised to make another great leap forward. When the race in Lake Biwa began Hosoya was just an unknown 25-year-old, but when he hit the finish line he'd inked his name on the list of top candidates for the Paris Olympics. What once was just a dream is now a realistic goal. "I'd had some vague hopes before about representing Japan," he said, "but now that feeling is burning bright."  Someone who has been involved with Hosoya's athletic career had often told hi...

Hayato Sonoda age: 30 sponsor: Kurosaki Harima graduated from: Kumamoto Kokufu H.S., Jobu University best time inside MGC window: 2:09:34, 2nd, 2018 Beppu-Oita Marathon PB: 2:09:34, 2nd, 2018 Beppu-Oita Marathon other PBs: 5000 m: 14:05.64 (2016) 10000 m: 28:52.49 (2018) half marathon: 1:03:00 (2016) marathons inside MGC window (Aug. 1 2017 – April 30 2019) 18th, 2019 Boston Marathon, 2:15:58 8th, 2019 Beppu-Oita Marathon, 2:10:39 5th, 2018 Fukuoka International Marathon, 2:10:31 4th, 2018 Jakarta Asian Games Marathon, 2:19:04 2nd, 2018 Beppu-Oita Marathon, 2:09:34 – PB 11th, 2017 Fukuoka International Marathon, 2:12:04 other major results: 33rd, 2019 Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon, 1:05:42 21st, 2019 Niigata Half Marathon, 1:06:01 27th, 2019 New Year Ekiden Fourth Stage (22.4 km), 1:07:34 5th, 2018 Kyushu Corporate Ekiden Seventh Stage (16.3 km), 47:22 70th, 2018 Valencia World Half Marathon Championships, 1:04:12 7th, 2017 Lake Biwa Marathon, 2:11:32 4th, 2...

http://www.sanspo.com/sports/news/20161205/ath16120505000003-n1.html translated and edited by Brett Larner photo by Dr. Helmut Winter At the Dec. 4 Fukuoka International Marathon , a selection race for next August's London World Championships, general division entrant Hayato Sonoda (27, Team Kurosaki Harima) finished 4th in 2:10:40, a massive new PB over his 2:17:40 last year in Fukuoka.  "I've never been able to run the kind of time I thought I could, but finally everything I've done has paid off," he said. During the race Sonoda told himself, "Stay positive and don't lose heart." Sure enough, when the time came late in the race and the other athletes around him were fading he opened up and blossomed.  Moving up rapidly through the field he ended as the second Japanese finisher, putting himself into consideration for the World Championships team. photo © 2016 Dr. Helmut Winter all rights reserved

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/1601917.html translated by Brett Larner Smiling after winning his marathon debut , 21-year-old Ethiopian Melaku Abera (Kurosaki Harima) told reporters, "I love Japan!  Thanks to this I can stay here a bit longer."  Running in a lead pack of Kenyans, Ethiopians and other invited international athletes, Abera threw in a surge at 35 km that put him out front alone.  While frontrunning he blew kisses at the TV cameras and talked to them in Japanese.  "I was saying thank you to my coach and teammates," he said, a sign of how much he likes the Kitakyushu-based Kurosaki Harima ekiden team. Abera came to Japan four years ago to join Kurosaki Harima where he was expected to serve as the ekiden team's ringer, but in the New Year Ekiden and other important races he didn't produce the hoped-for results.  His contract was not renewed, meaning he was scheduled to return to his home in Ethiopia at the end of the fis...