Skip to main content

East Japan and Kyushu Corporate Men's Ekiden Previews


Thursday's public holiday is the traditional date for the East Japan Corporate Men's Ekiden, the first of the regional qualifiers for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship. The New Year Ekiden is the only one of the major championship ekidens without a seeded bracket guaranteeing top-placing teams a spot at the next year's race, something that forces every corporate men's team to run the regional qualifier right in the middle of fall marathon season. Liberalizing that setup would have a measurable effect on men's marathoning, but like everything else in Japan vested financial interests and politics keep things the way they are.

This year the East Japan race, which covers the greater Tokyo area and further north, returns to the roads of rural Saitama for 76.9 km in 7 stages after spending the pandemic on a loop course inside a park in the city of Kumagaya. 31 teams are entered, a massive increase due to the move to allow club teams to participate, with the top 12 going on to the big race on Jan. 1. In a first, TBS will be broadcasting the race on race day, not quite live but starting at 13:55 local time.

There's not much chance of 2022 New Year Ekiden champ Honda or 2021 winner Fujitsu failing to qualify, even with Honda having lost anchor Hidekazu Hijikata to a better offer from Kyushu Region rival Asahi Kasei. Down to about 9th-ranked JR Higashi Nihon things are pretty predictable, but starting with #10-ranked Konica Minolta, still in a rebuilding phase after coaching and membership turnover, it starts getting interesting. Supermarket competitors Sunbelx and Comodi Iida are ranked 11th an 12th, with SID Group and Press Kogyo close behind. The Tokyo Police Department team is also strong, making it at least 6 teams in serious contention for the last 3 spots.

In terms of individuals, Fujitsu is coming out hard with track specialists Yuta Bando, Benard Kimeli, Kazuya Shiojiri, Ken Yokote and Hiroki Matsueda set to handle the first five stages. Honda is pinning a lot of its hopes on Olympians Ryoma Aoki and Tatsuhiko Ito on the third and fourth legs and anchor Naoki Koyama, a key player in its New Year Ekiden win. #5-ranked GMO has a marathoner-heavy lineup, with Yuta Shimoda, Tadashi Isshiki, Yuya Yoshida and Ryo Hashimoto running 4th through 7th, even as its top marathoner Suguru Osako is in NYC for the marathon there.

International athletes are restricted to the 8.0 km Second Stage, where 16 teams are fielding Kenyans: Fujitsu's Kimeli, Jackson Kavesa (Honda), Richard Kimunyan (Hitachi Butsuryu), Stanley Waithaka (Yakult), Gideon Kipkertich Ronoh (GMO), Ledama Kisaisa (Kao), Benson Kiplangat (Subaru), John Kariuki (Komori Corp.), Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon), James Muoki (Konica Minolta), Samson Ndirangu (Sunbelx), Benard Kimani (Comodi Iida), Titus Wambua (SID Group), Lawrence Ngure (Press Kogyo), Alexander Mutiso (ND Software) and Daniel Muiva Kitonyi (Track Tokyo). Taken all together there's not another road race in the world this week with this kind of firepower in its lineup. Live results will be available here. English coverage may be available on @JRNLive, with some on-site coverage on @tri_chaser.


Also tomorrow, the Kyushu Region holds its regional qualifier, with 19 teams racing 80.2 km in 7 stages for the 8 New Year Ekiden places on the line. Megalith Asahi Kasei and the strong Mitsubishi Juko, Kurosaki Harima and Kyudenko teams are pretty much a given for qualification, with Toyota Kyushu and Yasukawa Denki also pretty well secure. That leaves three teams, Nishitetsu, Togami Denki and Hiramatsu Byoin in contention for the last two spots.

The first stage has a tasty matchup between sub-61 half marathoners Kenta Murayama (Asahi Kasei) and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima), and 2:07:05 marathoner Toshiki Sadakata (Mitsubishi Juko), with the anchor stage featuring 2:06 marathoners Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Juko) and Hijikata in his Asashi Kasei debut, sub-61 half marathoner Kiyoshi Koga (Yasukawa Denki), 2:07:38 marathoner Shohei Otsuka (Kyudenko) and more.

The Second Stage isn't as deep as in the larger East Japan region but is still packed with top-level Japan-based African talent like Davis Kiplangat (Asahi Kasei), Cleophas Kandie (Mitsubishi Juko), Joel Mwaura (Kurosaki Harima), Benard Koech (Kyudenko), Anthony Maina (Toyota Kyushu), Welde Tufa (Yasukawa Denki), Nixon Lessia (Nishitetsu), Simon Kariuki (Togami Denki) and Yeneblo Biyazen (Hiramatsu Byoin). Complete entry lists are here.

© 2022 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

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...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more