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Vote for Nilsson for European Athlete of November


Sweden's David Nilsson has been nominated for European Athlete of November for his 1:02:09 national record at last month's Ageo City Half Marathon, where he raced Japanese national record holder Yuta Shitara through 20 km. Vote for Nilsson on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter by Saturday.

photo © 2018 Brett Larner, all rights reserved
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Aoyama Gakuin Fronts Wholesale Demolition of Hakone Ekiden Day One Course Records

Day Two results

2020 is the 100th anniversary of Japan's biggest sports event, the HakoneEkiden. Originally conceived of in large part by Japan's first Olympic marathoner Shiso Kanakuri as a way to develop Olympic marathon talent, this year's Hakone comes at the very start of the year the Olympics return to Tokyo. It also comes at the end of a season that saw four former Hakone stage winners take the top four spots at the 2020 Olympic marathon trials, validating Kanakuri's vision a century removed. But he could never have imagined the kind of race the kids would deliver.

Right from the gun the tone was set, with three-time First Stage winner Kazuya Nishiyama of last year's Day One winner Toyo University taking it out right on course record pace and the entire field going with it. The sheer aggression of the tone never changed over the entire five-stage, 107.5 km day, both big names and unknowns hitting it hard every stage. Minor school runner Rei Yonemitsu outran a…
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Aoyama Gakuin Holds Off Defending Champ Tokai on Hakone Ekiden Day Two to Win Overall Title

Day One results and report

After a record-breaking first day, 2015-2018 HakoneEkiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University held off last year's winner Tokai University to take the overall title in course record time. AGU started the return trip to Tokyo with a 3:22 lead over Tokai, enough for Tokai head coach Hayashi Morozumi to express pessimism about his team's chances of making up such a big deficit over Day Two's five stages totaling 109.6 km.

Not that they didn't try. On the day's first stage, the brutal 20.8 km Sixth Stage featuring a steep climb early on and then over 800 m of descent, mostly in the middle 10 km, two-time 1500 m national champion Ryoji Tatezawa broke the course record by 40 seconds to cut over a minute off AGU's lead. Tokai's next two runners Sakito Matsuzaki and Yohei Komatsu cut further into AGU's margin of error, but at the start of the day's longest stage, the 23.1 km Ninth Stage, Tokai was still exactly 2 minutes behind. Its…
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Championship Ekiden Week is Here - Mount Fuji, New Year and Hakone Previews

Championship ekiden week is here, four days of road relay action spread across five days from Dec. 30 to Jan. 3, all broadcast live to millions of fans across the nation.

Last year Nagoya's Meijo University beat five-time champ Ritsumeikan University to win the Mount Fuji Women's Ekiden, the National University Women's Ekiden Championships invitational, in course record time. This season Meijo looked pretty well unbeatable at the mid-season Morinomiyako Ekiden, beating runner-up Daito Bunka University by over two and a half minutes and Ritsumeikan by more than three over Morinomiyako's six-stage, 38.1 km course. Mount Fuji's is more demanding, seven hilly stages totaling 43.4 km through the foothills of Mount Fuji. Last year Meijo, Daito Bunka and Ritsumeikan finished within two and a half minutes of each other, and with Meijo looking even better this season it'll be hard for either of its main rival teams, or any others, to close that gap up. Watch the Mount …
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