by Koichi Iwasa of DogsorCaravan On Aug. 2 the 51st Mount Fuji Ekiden took place, starting and finishing in Gotemba, Shizuoka and covering 11 stages up to the peak of Mount Fuji and back down. Teams of 6 runners tackle the tough course, each running handling one uphill and one downhill leg with the 6th runner reaching the peak before turning around to head back to the exchange zone where they started. The Heisei Mountaineering Club team took the overall win in 3:50:39, beating 9-time winner Takigahara SDF Base by 2:07 and stopping them from achieving a 10-year victory streak. The independent team division and SDF team division were separated in 2005, and this was the first time that the winning independent team outran the fastest SDF team to take the overall title. The roster that Heisei Mountaineering put together for this year's race raised eyebrows among everyone familiar with the Japanese trail running scene. Handling the 5th and 7th legs was Ruy Ueda , winner of the Fuji M...
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As far as the unretirement, Osako announced on July 29, 2021 that he was going to retire after the Olympic marathon, which he ran on Aug. 8, 2021. On Feb. 7, 2022 he announced that he was coming out of retirement. It would probably take a lawyer to determine for sure whether that announcement happened exactly on the last day of a 6-month period following the Olympic marathon, but TV ratings in Japan for the men's marathon were more than double those for the women's marathon and it's safe to say a big part of that was due to Osako saying it was going to be his last race.