Sunday is the Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden, the season-ending national championship race for corporate women's teams. The top 8 placers at last year's Queens Ekiden, Sekisui Kagaku , Japan Post , Panasonic , Shiseido , Daihatsu , Daiichi Seimei , Tenmaya and Iwatani Sangyo , auto-qualified for 2024, leaving the rest of the league's teams to line up in Fukuoka at the Princess Ekiden in hopes of joining them. 30 teams will compete for 16 places at the Queens Ekiden, each with a team of 6 running a total of 42.195 km. TBS is broadcasting the race live starting at 11:50, with streaming on Youtube. 16th at Queens last year, Kyudenko has scratched from Sunday's race due to athlete injuries preventing them from having enough people ready to run. 22nd at Queens, Yamada Holdings is also out because it couldn't field 6 runners, one reason being the transfer of one of its star runners, Sakiho Tsutsui , to Universal Entertai
The National Sports Festival wrapped up Tuesday in Saga with one of the best races of the meet, the junior women's 3000 m. The top 5 all went under 9:00, with Daisy Jerop (Sendai Ikuei H.S.) dominating in 8:56.36. Sharon Mwanti (Yamanashi Gakuin H.S.) was 2nd in 9:01.65, with Mei Hokiyama (Yamada H.S.) close behind in 9:04.86 for 3rd, Rin Setoguchi (Kamikura Gakuen H.S.) 4th in 9:06.63 and Pauline Wanjuku (Teikyo Nagaoka H.S.) 5th in 9:09.36. All told the top 12 broke 9:30. The junior boys' 3000 m was almost as competitive. Sei Yoshida (Tokai Sapporo H.S.) and Kain Inagaki (KERT) raced right to the line, Yoshida getting the win in 8:07.12 but Inagaki scoring a junior high school record with an 8:07.29 for 2nd. 3rd and 4th-placers Yudai Fujii (Miyazaki Nichidai H.S.) and Taira Ichikawa (Sendai Ikuei) couldn't have been closer, Fujii taking 3rd in 8:17.06 and Ichikawa 4th in 8:17.07, with the rest of the top 10 all getting under 8:30. Monday's junior men's 50