Despite losing two key members of its first-ever winning team from last year's New Year Ekiden, one to injury and one to poaching by another team, Honda put together an even faster overall performance to take its second-straight corporate men's national title Jan. 1 in Maebashi, Gunma.
Hideto Kosode got things off to a great start for Honda, tying for fastest on the 12.3 km opening leg. Kenyan Justus Soget was the weakest link on the team, dropping to 7th on the 8.3 km 2nd leg, but a decent run from Shoya Kawase on the 13.6 km 3rd leg brought Honda back up to 3rd overall.
Naoki Koyama turned in the first of three critical performances in a row, taking the lead on the race's longest stage with its 3rd-best time, 1:04:38 for 22.4 km. Tokyo Olympics steeplechaser Ryoma Aoki only had a 12-second lead over last year's 4th-placer Mitsubishi Juko at the start of the 15.8 km 5th leg, but despite playing it conservatively for the first 5 km he still walked with its fastest time of the day, 45:47, and a 44-second lead to hand over to 6th man Ken Nakayama.
Nakayama won the 6th leg last year and managed to turn in its 2nd-fastest time today on the same stage, tacking another 2 seconds onto Honda's lead. That set up anchor Shin Kimura with a 3 sec/km margin of error on the 15.7 km 7th leg, enough to be conservative if he wanted to. But he didn't. Kimura ran the 2nd-fastest time on his leg, stopping the clock at 4:48:06 to give Honda a back-to-back national title. And despite Aoki being the only team member to win his stage and no new course records, Honda was 2:58 faster than year, showing how they had worked as a team to overcome the setback of missing two key members.
After starting 4th and dropping to 8th mid-race after Yuta Bando faltered on the 3rd leg, Fujitsu working its way up to 2nd over the last 2/3 of the race. Anchor Hironori Tsuetaki had the best track credentials on the anchor leg and could theoretically have run down Kimura, but he was totally unable to make up any ground, clocking the same 46:13 as Kimura to land Fujitsu 2nd overall in 4:48:52.
Toyota had a major blow to its hopes when Kenyan Alex Cherono dropped from 7th to 28th on the 2nd leg. Tomoki Ota managed to turn that around with a brilliant 37:40 stage win on the 3rd leg to move up to 5th. Japan's top man at the 2022 World Championships marathon Yusuke Nishiyama bumped that up to 3rd overall on the 4th leg, but Toyota's next two runners both lost ground. That left anchor Yuma Hattori to try to pick up the pieces, which he did, in style.
Hattori made up a gap of 1:10 to run down the trio of Mitsubishi Juko's Yusei Yoshida, GMO's Toshinori Watanabe and SG Holdings' Takayasu Hashizume, then dropped them all with a wicked last kick to take 3rd in 4:50:10, his best performance since before the Tokyo Olympics. Mitsubishi Juko was 4th again in 4:50:13, GMO 5th in 4:50:16 and SG Holdings 6th in 4:50:17.
Last year's runner-up Subaru was 7th in 4:51:32, with anchor Ryo Kuchimachi moving from 9th onto the 8-deep podium and dropping Chudenko's Hitoshi Okahara in a sprint finish. Chudenko had never placed better than 13th before but held on to 8th in 4:51:36. 2019 World Championships marathoner Kohei Futaoka played a key role in Chudenko's first podium finish, running the 4th-best time on the 5th leg to move the team from 10th to 8th.
11th last year, Toyota Boshoku got its hopes of a podium finish up when 6th man Takuya Hanyu, the fastest Japanese man of 2022 over 10000 m, turned in the fastest time on his leg to go from 13th to 7th. But anchor Kosuke Yamada couldn't deliver, overtaken by both Kuchimachi and Okahara and falling to 9th in 4:52:47. But he did just hold off the next three teams, JR Higashi Nihon, Toyota Kyushu and Hitachi Butsuryu, all of finished within 10 seconds of him.
13th in 4:53:19, the Kao team's Yohei Ikeda turned in JRN's pick for run of the day, running the 22.4 km 4th leg's fastest time of the day, 1:04:04, to go from 18th to 8th. En route he caught CR holder Kyohei Hosoya of last year's 6th-placer Kurosaki Harima, who managed to get back away but lost to Ikeda on time, 2nd-fastest at 1:04:37. Kurosaki Harima was a contender for the win this time but struggled with disastrous opening and anchor legs and finished only 14th in 4:53:26.
The bomb of the day was last year's 3rd-placer Asahi Kasei. The team that recruited Honda's winning anchor last year Hidekazu Hijikata away from them, this year Asahi Kasei was never better than 12th. Last year Hijikata turned in the fastest anchor stage time to bring Honda home to the win. This year he was only 27th-fastest of the 36 runners on the last stage and suffered the embarrassment of getting overtaken by minor supermarket team Sunbelx's anchor Yuya Yamashita to fall from 15th to 16th.
Despite a brilliant stage win by 10 mile world best-setter Benard Koech on the the 2nd leg, Kyudenko could do no better than 20th overall. Sumitomo Denko lacked its two top men Hyuga Endo and Kazuki Tamura and finished 24th. Yakult was as high as 3rd in the early going but dropped to 28th when anchor Ryu Takaku, a 2:06 marathoner who paced in Fukuoka last month, limped into the finish with the slowest time on the stage. Yasukawa Denki was a late scratch from the race when one team member tested positive for COVID-19 just days before the race.
67th New Year Ekiden
Corporate Men's National Championships
Maebashi, Gunma, 01 Jan. 2023
36 teams, 100.0 km, 7 stages
Top Team Results - 8-deep podium
1. Honda - 4:48:06
2. Fujitsu - 4:48:52
3. Toyota - 4:50:10
4. Mitsubishi Juko - 4:50:13
5. GMO - 4:50:16
6. SG Holdings - 4:50:17
7. Subaru - 4:51:32
8. Chudenko - 4:51:36
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9. Toyota Boshoku - 4:52:47
10. JR Higashi Nihon - 4:52:53
11. Toyota Kyushu - 4:52:56
12. Hitachi Butsuryu - 4:52:57
13. Kao - 4:53:19
14. Kurosaki Harima - 4:53:26
15. Sunbelx - 4:53:30
16. Asahi Kasei - 4:54:32
Top Individual Stage Results
First Stage (12.3 km)
1. Kota Murayama (GMO) - 35:35
2. Hideo Kosode (Honda) - 35:35
3. Naoki Ota (Yakult) - 35:35
Second Stage (8.3 km)
1. Benard Koech (Kyudenko) - 21:54
2. Benson Kiplangat (Subaru) - 21:59
3. Emmanuel Kiplagat (Mitsubishi Juko) - 22:00
4. Anthony Maina (Toyota Kyushu) - 22:10
5. Benard Kimeli (Fujitsu) - 22:11
6. Sitonik Kiprono (Kurosaki Harima) - 22:13
7. Richard Kimunyan (Hitachi Butsuryu) - 22:20
7. Cosmas Mwangi (Chugoku Denryoku) - 22:20
7. Philemon Kiplagat (Aisan Kogyo) - 22:20
10. Amos Kurgat (Chudenko) - 22:23
Third Stage (13.6 km)
1. Tomoki Ota (Toyota) - 37:40
2. Suguru Osako (GMO) - 37:57
3. Hiroto Hayashida (Mitsubishi Juko) - 38:06
Fourth Stage (22.4 km)
1. Yohei Ikeda (Kao) - 1:04:04
2. Kyohei Hosoya (Kurosaki Harima) - 1:04:37
3. Naoki Koyama (Honda) - 1:04:38
4. Ken Yokote (Fujitsu) - 1:04:43
5. Yusuke Nishiyama (Toyota) - 1:04:47
6. Yuya Yoshida (GMO) - 1:04:49
7. Naoki Aiba (Chudenko) - 1:04:56
8. Shun Yuzawa (SG Holdings) - 1:05:01
9. Hiroto Inoue (Mitsubishi Juko) - 1:05:15
10. Takashi Nanba (Tonic) - 1:05:18
Fifth Stage (15.8 km)
1. Ryoma Aoki (Honda) - 45:47
2. Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) - 45:58
3. Yuto Imae (GMO) - 46:04
Sixth Stage (11.9 km)
1. Takuya Hanyu (Toyota Boshoku) - 34:58
2. Ken Nakayama (Honda) - 35:15
3. Toshiki Sadakata (Mitsubishi Juko) - 35:19
Seventh Stage (15.7 km)
1. Yuma Hattori (Toyota) - 46:08
2. Shin Kimura (Honda) - 46:13
2. Hironori Tsuetaki (Fujitsu) - 46:13
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