japan running news

Around 200 athletes who had been recruited by Toyo University's famed scout Hisashi Sato, 65, gathered at a hotel in Kawagoe, Saitama on Mar. 23 to celebrate Sato's retirement from his position as assistant coach at Toyo at the end of this month. Of the 30 men to have qualified for the Sept. 15 MGC Race 2020 Tokyo Olympics marathon trials, 4 are Toyo alumni, more than any other university.   Hiroyuki Yamamoto (32, Konica Minolta), who qualified for the MGC race at the Mar. 10 Lake Biwa Marathon, and former marathon national record holder Yuta Shitara (27, Honda), were among the attendees.

Since it first won the Hakone Ekiden in 2009 to this year's 3rd-place finish Toyo has shown extraordinary consistency, finishing in the top 3 at Hakone all 11 years. Sato worked alongside head coach Toshiyuki Sakai, 42, to help develop that kind of stability. Where he showed exceptional ability in his 25 years with the team was in scouting. Sato famously discovered future Hakone uphill F…

Ryu Hashimoto, at left in headband, at January's Okumusashi Ekiden.

Allegations have surfaced that members of the Toyo University ekiden team, who are targeting their first Hakone Ekiden title in five years this season, committed assault against a first-year student who had just joined the team at the start of the school year in April. The alleged victim, Student X, 18, made the allegations in an interview with gossip tabloid rag Weekly Bunshun.

In junior high school Student X had the fastest JHS 3000 m time in the country. In high school he was ranked near the top nationally, helping lead Saitama prefecture to victory at the National Men's Ekiden in January alongside half marathon national record holder and Toyo alumnus Yuta Shitara. In April he entered Toyo University on an athletic scholarship.

According to Student X, he began receiving "guidance" in the team dormitory and at training camps as soon as he joined the team. "Every night the first-years have to d…

With a mix of confidence and regret in their hearts a day after their third-straight runner-up finish and tenth-straight top 3 placing at the Jan. 2-3 Hakone Ekiden, the members of the Toyo University men's ekiden team assembled early in the morning on Jan. 4 for their first training session of the new year. The session began with a 6:30 a.m. team meeting at its dormitory in Kawagoe, Saitama. Head coach Toshiyuki Sakai, 41, was passionate as he told the team members, "The way we finished 2nd this year was different from last year. This time we won Day One and led for the first 15 km of the Sixth Stage on Day Two. This was the first step in our counterattack."



The 2014 Hakone champion, Toyo's margin of loss behind four-time winner Aoyama Gakuin University has shrunk from 11:55 in 2015 to 7:11 in 2016 to 7:21 in 2017 and finally to 4:53 this year. Its Day One winning lineup of First Stage winner Kazuya Nishiyama (1st yr.), Second Stage 3rd-placer Akira Aizawa (2nd yr.…

As Japan celebrates 100 years of the ekiden, its greatest racing series, the Big Three University Men's Ekidens, kicks off with the Oct. 9 Izumo Ekiden.

The university men's ekiden circuit entered its modern era of mass popularity and incredible depth of quality with Toyo University's 2012 Hakone Ekiden win, when innovative young coach Toshiyuki Sakai led Toyo to become the first team in history to average under 3:00 / km for the entire ten-stage, 217 km-plus Hakone course including two stages with nearly 900 m elevation difference each. The Toyo team, led by uphill specialist Ryuji Kashiwabara and wonder twins Keita and Yuta Shitara, became superstars, Kashiwabara a national icon and Yuta the future half marathon national record holder.

In the midst of Toyo's reign, underdogs Aoyama Gakuin University arose from nothing to replace them at the top. Susumu Hara, another innovative and businesslike young coach, brought AGU up systematically from an absence of over 30 yea…

http://f-trackfield.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2017/04/post-6808.html

translated by Brett Larner



Future 2:07 marathoner Masato Imai was the first modern star of Japan's biggest sporting event, the two-day Hakone Ekiden university men's road relay, the first to earn the moniker "God of the Mountain" for annihilating preconceptions of what was possible on Hakone's brutal uphill Fifth Stage. But nobody catalyzed and symbolized the birth of the modern university ekiden and everything associated with it, the transformation of college kids into national celebrities, more than the man who replaced him, Ryuji Kashiwabara.

As a first-year at Toyo University Kashiwabara caught national attention when, pre-debut at the 2009 Hakone Ekiden, he said with calm but brash self-assurance that he was going to break Imai's Fifth Stage record.  And the entire country watched open-mouthed as he did it, the sight of him crying as he ran the last kilometer still etched in the minds and he…