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The Nippon Television broadcast of the 98th Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 2 and 3 generated average viewership ratings of 26.2% for the first day of the race and 28.4% for the second day , according to data released on Jan. 4. The overall average viewership rating for the two days was 27.2%. Last year's broadcast had average viewership of 31.0% on day one, 33.7% on day two, and an overall average of 32.3%, all the highest since the TV broadcast began in 1987. Peak viewership on the first day of this year's race came at 1:22 p.m. when winner Aoyama Gakuin University 's Hiroki Wakabayashi finished the uphill Fifth Stage, reaching 31.1%. The peak day two rating of 33.4% came at 9:05 a.m., just after the finish of the downhill Sixth Stage when Aoyama Gakuin's Yuki Takahashi held on to the team's lead and Juntendo University 's Keito Makase overtook Komazawa University 's Kohei Tsukuda in a duel for 2nd. Meanwhile, race organizers Kanto Gakuren  announced that an ...

Riding the momentum of its  Hakone Ekiden Day One win,   Aoyama Gakuin University  broke the Day Two and overall course records to take its sixth Hakone title in eight years. With all sixteen men on his entry roster having broken 29 minutes for 10000 m and even leaving some recent 62-minute half marathoners off, head coach Susumu Hara  had plenty of material to work with on the five-stage 109.6 km Day Two return trip from the mountain town of Hakone to central Tokyo. Handling the 20.8 km descent on the day's first leg, 4th-year Yuki Takahashi was the weakest link in the Day Two lineup in terms of finishing time on his individual stage, running only 8th-fastest, but even so he added a valuable 41 seconds to AGU's initial lead of 2:37. And from there it was a total blowout. Hironori Kishimoto  was the only runner to break 63 minutes on the 21.3 km 7th leg, taking the lead to 4:51. Issei Sato  lost 19 seconds to Juntendo University 's Masaki Tsuda  but ...

Heavy favorite Aoyama Gakuin University set up for its sixth overall Hakone Ekiden  victory in the last eight years, taking the Day One win by over two and a half minutes and leading defending champ Komazawa University  by more than three.  Yamato Yoshii  (Chuo Univ.), Japan's 5000 m U20 NR holder and 2nd-fastest U20 half marathoner, led the 21.3 km opening leg start to finish, starting with a 2:50 CR pace opening km, splitting 27:58 at 10 km, and ending at 1:00:40, 26 seconds under the old record held by Yuki Sato and equivalent to a 1:00:06 half marathon. The rest of the field was fast too, Komazawa's Takumi Karasawa leading them in in 1:01:19 with AGU's Hayato Shiki  6 seconds further back. Komazawa's top man Ren Tazawa , who ran an all-time Japanese #2 27:23.44 for 10000 m last month, took his time calmly reeling in Chuo's Shun Teshima on the 23.1 km Second Stage, taking just over 7 km to close the gap and never looking back once he did. The expectation ...

With a young team all aged from 20 to 25 but including two Olympians and a 2:06:26 marathoner, Honda  won its first-ever New Year Ekiden corporate men's national title Jan. 1 in Gunma.  Off to a slow start on the 7-stage, 100.0 km course, Honda went from 13th to 23rd in the field of 37 over the first two legs before third runner Naoki Koyama turned things around. With a strong tailwind that pushed the top 7 on his stage under the older course record, Koyama was 8th-fastest in 37:40 for 13.6 km to take Honda up to 14th. Tokyo Olympics 10000 m runner Tatsuhiko Ito handled the race's longest stage, 22.4 km, and with a 1:04:15 putting him at 5th-fastest Ito advanced Honda to 5th overall. Olympic 3000 mSC team member Ryoma Aoki  ran the 2nd-fastest time on the 15.8 km Fifth Stage, surviving a turn into the wind to take Honda to 3rd and setting up sixth man Ken Nakayama  to go for the top position. Initially working together with Tsukasa Koyama  (Subaru) to close ...

It's four days until the biggest race of the year, the 98th Hakone Ekiden  on Jan. 2 and 3. 21 university men's teams race 10 legs from central Tokyo to the mountains and back over the course of two days, each leg roughly a half marathon in distance and the total course adding up to 217.1 km.  65 million people watched at least part of the 2021  NTV Hakone broadcast  broadcast, so you know they must be on to something. The broadcast, the best in the world, starts at 7:00 a.m. both days, and as you'd expect they keep it a locked-down secret only for Japanese audiences. A VPN or  mov3.co  are probably the best bets for trying to watch from abroad, but JRN will once again cover it all on  @JRNLive .  The 2021 race had one of the most dramatic finishes in Hakone history , with Komazawa University  anchor Takuma Ishikawa  coming from over a kilometer behind to run down Yuki Onodera  with 2 km to go and stop him from bringing Soka Univer...

Course record holder and 3-time defending champ Meijo University  was unstoppable again, leading start to finish to win the 2021 Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden university women's national title Dec. 30 in Shizuoka.  1st-year Nanase Tanimoto  got things rolling with a 12:49 win on the 4.1 km opening leg to give Meijo a 7-second lead that increased to 51 seconds over the next three legs, 2nd runner Tomomi Musembi Takamatsu  holding the margin and 3rd and 4th runners  Hana Inoue  and Yuma Yamamoto running the fastest times on their stages. On the longest leg, the 10.5 km Fifth Stage, Yuna Wada  took 45 seconds off the course record to further open Meijo's lead to 1:13, and the team's last two runners Yuka Masubuchi and Narumi Kobayashi both did their parts, Masubuchi taking the lead to 1:59 and Kobayashi to 2:58 on the tough uphill anchor stage to bring Meijo in for the win in 2:22:24 for the full 43.4 km course.  But the race's main action happen...

Back from pandemic-era cancelation last year for its 4th edition, the Year-End Half Marathon took place Dec. 29 in Showa Kinen Park in the western Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa. Conceived of as a race for corporate and university teams that didn't qualify for the New Year Ekiden or Hakone Ekiden, this year it played to exactly that kind of field. イヤーエンドハーフ 11km地点 pic.twitter.com/dXwKGJP70W — 城西大学男子駅伝部 (@josai_ekiden) December 29, 2021 After a slow start  Peter Wanjiru , the first Kenyan to run for Daito Bunka University , and Kenta Uchida  of the SID Group corporate team went head-to-head up front, with a chase pack made up of people from Asia University , Josai University , Chiba University  and the Raffine  corporate team drifting further and further behind. Uchida, running the race as a final tune-up for next month's Chevron Houston Marathon, slipped back from Wanjiru in the final km, leaving Wanjiru to take the win in 1:03:18. Uchida, whose coach Junichi Shibata ...

The year's biggest races are just around the corner, with four days of championship ekiden racing in the space of five coming up this week. First up on Dec. 30 is the Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden university women's national championship, 7 stages totaling 43.4 km through the foothills of Mt. Fuji. Meijo University  has won the last three years, setting the course record of 2:21:38 last year, and it's going to win again. Meijo's core quartet Narumi Kobayashi , Yuma Yamamoto , Yuna Arai  and Yuna Wada  all made the Japanese top 25 for 5000 m or 10000 m this year, more than all other universities combined, and unless Meijo has some kind of major setback there's just no way for its strongest competition, perpetual 2nd-placer Daito Bunka University , to match it.  The most exciting thing to look forward to will be seeing how Takushoku University  1st-year Seira Fuwa , 30:45.21 in her 10000 m debut earlier this month, does on a more technical course than she has raced ...