JRN reader Juan Jose Martinez recently posted video highlights of Atsushi Fujita's national record 2:06:51 win at the 2000 Fukuoka International Marathon on his website. Fujita, who at the time had already broken Toshihiko Seko's long-standing university marathon record, outran several Olympic medalists to set the then-national record. His time after the 35 km point remains the fastest finish ever run in Fukuoka, faster than the marks set by Haile Gebrselassie, Samuel Wanjiru, Tsegay Kebede, Jaouad Gharib, Deriba Merga or anyone else. Click here to watch the classic video.
3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
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