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Princess Ekiden Preview and Streaming



The Princess Ekiden, the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden national corporate women's championships, happens Sunday in rural Fukuoka. 31 teams of 6 women will be racing 42.195 km in pursuit of 16 places at Queens alongside the top tier of podium placers from last year's national championships. TBS will be streaming the race live on Youtube starting at 12:10 p.m., and if you've got a VPN you should be all set. Live results will be posted here.

There's a general sense that Japanese women aren't where they used to be, but counter to that trend are a lot of new women's ekiden teams trying to get off the ground. Along with some of the long-established powers like past national champions Universal Entertainment, Tenmaya and Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo, there are relatively young teams like Nitori, Senko and Tokyo Metro trying to qualify for the first time, and newcomers like Bears Camellia making their debuts. Next year expect to see at least one more, Shin Nihon Jusetsu.

Last year only 44 seconds separated 19th-place Sysmex from final qualifier Higo Ginko in 16th, making the question of who's likely to fill in the bottom end of the qualifying list an open one. But it's a little more complicated this year. Any team that had someone qualified for last weekend's MGC Olympic marathon trials will auto-qualify for Queens as long as they finish the Princess Ekiden. That would cover Uniqlo, Universal, Tenmaya, Starts, Wacoal, Otsuka Seiyaku, Hitachi, and Kyocera, half the qualifying spots.

Those are all teams that would likely qualify anyway, so you could argue the special rule this won't change the results that much. But it's not a given that they'll all finish. Kyocera DNFd last year while running 15th when anchor Mei Shirai suffered a stress fracture. But the dynamic will be a bit different, at any rate, as it's feasible that at least one of the teams qualifying via the MGC route finishes outside the top 16.

  1. Kyudenko
  2. Uniqlo
  3. Universal Entertainment
  4. Yamada Holdings
  5. Tenmaya
  6. Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo
  7. Iwatani Sangyo
  8. Starts
  9. Wacoal
  10. Daiso
  11. Otsuka Seiyaku
  12. Route Inn Hotels
  13. Hitachi
  14. Shimamura
  15. Higo Ginko
  16. 18 Ginko
  17. Nitori
  18. Sysmex
  19. Senko
  20. SID Group
  21. Noritz
  22. Canon
  23. Kagoshima Ginko
  24. Comodi Iida
  25. Tokyo Metro
  26. Aichi Denki
  27. Toto
  28. Memolead
  29. Kyocera
  30. Bears Camellia
  31. Ehime Ginko
© 2023 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

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