japan running news

3 more corporate regions held their qualifying races for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden national championships this weekend. With the qualifying format changing to a single race next year this was the final running for each of the historic ekidens. At the combined 66th Chubu Region and 56th Hokuriku Region ekiden in Tahara, Aichi, Toyota won the 7-stage, 80.5 km race in 3:53:54 after losses the last 2 years. With strong winds blowing off the ocean, on the opening leg Toyota's Yamato Yoshii scored the first stage win of this 3 years with Toyota. After dropping back on the Second Stage Toyota retook the lead on the Third Stage thanks to a good run from Shunta Uchida , but lost it again when they were overtaken by Aichi Seiko . Takuma Yamakawa caught Aichi Seiko 3 km into the next leg and pulled away 4 km later to open an 18-second lead. Jin Yuasa held on to the lead on the Fifth Stage, and Toyota's last 2 runners Mebuki Suzuki and Hideyuki Tanaka managed to give the team a fin...

Held for the last time on a 7-stage, 89.3 km course in Oita, the 63rd Kyushu Corporate Ekiden , the regional qualifying race for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden national championships, took place Nov. 3. The Miyazaki-based Asahi Kasei took a record 49th win after losing last year setting a new CR of 4:18:46. Asahi Kasei's 2nd runner Shota Shiode put them into the lead by 3 seconds, and 3rd runner Ayumu Yamamoto built on that with a 31:40 CR for his 11.1 km leg. Head coach Hiroshi Miki commented, " Shota Morishita got us off to a good start, only 3 seconds down on the First Stage. Shiode really built the momentum on this race's longest stage, staying patient until it was time to make a move near the end. We were only 8th last year, so I'm extremely happy that we are back on top this time." The current system of regional qualifying races for the New Year Ekiden comes to an end this season, with a new single national-level qualifying race replacing it next year. Look...

Coming at a key point in ekiden season, few elite-level Japanese athletes run the TCS New York City Marathon, but this year 3 were on the line, 2026 Osaka Women's Marathon 6th-placer Rie Kawauchi (Otsuka Seiyaku), last year's Osaka Marathon men's runner-up Ryota Kondo (Mitsubishi Juko), and former men's NR holder Kengo Suzuki (Nike). In t he women's race , Kawauchi, a 2:24:16 runner, lost touch with the lead group before 20 km, going through halfway in 1:14:04 en route to an 18th-place finish in 2:31:29. Surprisingly, that was still the 4th-fastest time ever by a Japanese woman in New York, and the fastest since double Olympic medalist Yuko Arimori ran 2:31:12 in 2000. In the men's race , both Kondo and Suzuki took turns surging to the front, Suzuki doing it early and paying for it with splits of 1:04:06/1:08:09, ultimately landing 23rd in 2:12:15. Kondo, whose Osaka run last year was a solid debut of 2:05:39, was in it til the end and made multiple moves ov...

The last time Waseda University won the National University Ekiden in 2010 it pulled off something that had never been done and has never been duplicated since then, breaking the course records to win all 3 major university ekidens in a single season. After leading the top 7 teams under the CR to take last month's Izumo Ekiden , Waseda came one step closer to repeating history with a massive CR win at today's 58th National University Ekiden . 2026 Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University 's leading runner Ibuki Sugiyama was the only thing that stopped Waseda from leading wire to wire, giving EVERYTHING to improbably outkick Waseda's 1st-year 1500 m sensation Ojiro Honda and hand off in the top spot, maybe the single most memorable performance of the day. But from there it was a blowout, with Waseda 1st-years Yota Mashiko and Haruki Niizuma breaking the CRs on the next 2 stages, 2nd-year Rui Suzuki doing the same on the Fifth Stage, and 4th-year Shinsaku Kudo ...

Waseda University made history at the Izumo Ekiden on Oct. 12, leading the top 7 teams under the old CR to win by nearly a minute over the 6-stage, 45.1 km course. At 8 stages totaling 106.8 km, Sunday's National University Ekiden demands a balance between the kind of track speed that brought Waseda success at Izumo and the longer distances that make up January's Hakone Ekiden. Last year Waseda was 5th at Nationals , and with a better lineup this time around its chances of another win here are non-zero. But with the top 13 teams all having better rosters than last year it's got the potential to be an historic race like Izumo with multiple teams going under the 5:06:47 CR. TV Asahi has the live broadcast starting at 7:45 a.m. local time Sunday, with the race at 8:10 a.m. Official streaming is on TVer with a VPN. Last year's runner-up Chuo University has the best lineup in Nationals history, with the first-ever 8-man 5000 m average under 13:30 and the first-ever sub...

3-time Olympic marathoner Akio Usami died of cancer on Oct. 26. He was 83. Born May 31, 1943 in Yoshida, Niigata as the third of 9 siblings, Usami played basketball in junior high school and tennis in high school before starting running after entering Nihon University . Running with a recreational club his 1st year, he joined the NU track team his 2nd year just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and immediately showed promise, making NU's Hakone Ekiden starting team 3 years in a row. During his 3rd year he won the Ninth Stage at the 41st Hakone in 1965, playing a key role in NU's overall victory. After graduating he joined the Riccar corporate team and was superb in the marathon, a distance he had already started running while in university. He took 9th in the marathon at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, 12th in the 1972 Munich Olympics marathon, and 32nd in the 1976 Montreal Olympics marathon. Other achievements in his outstanding career included 4-straight marathon wins in intern...

The last big dynasty school in Japanese women's distance running with 7-straight wins at October's Morinomiyako Ekiden from 2017 to 2023 and 6-straight titles at the season-ending Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden from 2018 to 2023, Meijo University came back from a 3rd-place finish last year to win the 44th Morinomiyako Ekiden again, leading almost start-to-finish to set a 2:02:21 CR for the 6-stage, 38.0 km course in Sendai. 12 second back in 2nd after the opening leg, collegiate 3000 mSC champ Nozomi Kondo put Meijo out front with a 12:36 CR for the 4.0 km Second Stage, and the rest of the team never looked back. The biggest threat to a Meijo win was on the 9.2 m Fifth Stage, where this year's collegiate 10000 m winner Sarah Wanjiru from last year's runner-up Daito Bunka University started 50 seconds back from Meijo 1st-year Mao Kimura . In taking the 10000 m title Wanjiru had outrun Kimura by over a minute, but today Kimura was a revelation, strong and smooth out fr...