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3-Time Olympic Marathoner Akio Usami Passes Away

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...
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Kondo Runs Fastest-Ever Japanese Time at TCS New York City Marathon

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...
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Waseda 2/2 With National University Ekiden CR

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 ...
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