I don't particularly care about sprinting but I can't stop watching this video, so here it is again. Ladies and gentlemen, freshman anchor Shota Iizuka singlehandedly gives Chuo University a 1-second margin of victory over Waseda University and the Japanese national university record of 38.54 in the men's 4 x 100 m relay at the Kanto Regional University T&F Championships in Tokyo's National Stadium on May 22, 2010.
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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No official splits either, but I time him at 9.25 from the time the baton touches his hand to when he crosses the finish line. Anyone with better knowledge of sprint relay split timing feel free to offer a better estimate.
One of the Japanese comments compared the video to the Beijing Olympic final. The comment says Iizuka ran 8.13 from the line on the corner, while Asahara, the anchor on Japan's bronze medal team in Beijing, ran 8.24 and Powell ran 7.80. The guy who filmed this also says that it was like watching a bunch of junior high school kids racing a pro.
He might have got a little bit taller though.
I was really impressed by him the last year when he won 100m for the National Athletic Meet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zpM2fNmHXo
He clocked his PB of 10.38 in the pretty cold and raining condition, which I thought was great.
But that run is much more impressive!
It is a shame he will avoid the Japanese national the next month in favor of the World Junior Championships.
BTW thanx for all the videos you are uploading!
Thanks for all that info. I'm sure a lot of people are grateful.
184 cm! Wow, that is big for a Japanese guy. He is taller than me.
There you go.