Skip to main content

Nagano Breaks National Men's Ekiden CR for Third Time in a Row


Running with three returning members of last year's course record-breaking team, Nagano pulled off another CR to win its 3rd-straight National Men's Ekiden title Sunday in Hiroshima thanks in large part to a stellar run from anchor Mebuki Suzuki from Komazawa University.

Last year's opening leg 3rd-placer Ryuto Kawahara of Nagasaki got things started with a 2:44 opening km on the 7.0 km First Stage, then let 2023 National High School Ekiden First Stage winner Sota Orita of Hyogo take over. Orita did most of the work through the middle part of the stage, then with 1.5 km to go Kawahara attacked and pulled away to break the 19:39 CR set by Sonata Nagashima last year by 8 seconds. It was one of those runs that makes the National Men's Ekiden great, with someone from a high school that isn't good enough to make Nationals taking down one of the big stars whose team did. In a four-way sprint for 2nd Nagano's Yamato Hamaguchi was 4th and Orita 5th, both one second under the old CR in 19:38.

Between Orita and his follow-up Ren Kitamura, Hyogo moved up to 1st on the 3.0 km Second Stage, where the only off note in Nagano's performance came from Yuki Nakazawa, 29th in 8:54. Over the next three stages the core from last year's Nagano lineup, Waseda University's Taishi Ito and Soma Nagahara and Shunpei Yamaguchi of 2023 National High School Ekiden champion Saku Chosei H.S. took over the lead, with Yamaguchi extending it to 55 seconds. En route, Jun Kasai of Osaka took down one of the oldest stage records in the race, running 23:22 for the 8.5 km Third Stage to go 4 seconds under Terukazu Omori's old CR from 2005.

Nagano's sixth runner Hideto Takizawa lost 7 seconds to Chiba, but while anchor Suzuki still inherited a 48-second lead he was 10 seconds off pace to break the overall CR. Powered by having gotten beaten both on his stage and overall at the Hakone Ekiden three weeks ago, Suzuki soloed a 36:52 for the 13.0 km anchor stage, erasing Kenta Oshima's 37:09 CR that had stood since 2004. Oshima had been teammates with Third Stage CR holder Omori at the now-defunct Kuroshio Tsushin Service corporate team, both setting records that took two decades to fall.


Crossing the line in 2:17:00, Suzuki took 10 seconds off Nagano's CR from last year's win, which had been 1 second under the CR it had set in its win the previous edition. With the three-peat Nagano also scored a tenth win in the 27 editions of the National Men's Ekiden to date, securing its place at the core of Japanese distance running.

Last year's runner-up Saitama did it again, briefly leading on the Third Stage with a good run from Toru Kubota and coming back up from 5th to 2nd in 2:19:11 thanks to anchor Tomoya Ogikubo. 4th last year, Chiba was one better this time at 3rd in 2:19:32. Fifth runner Rui Sasaki was the standout on the Chiba lineup, running the 2nd-fastest time on his stage to go from 6th to 2nd. Kyoto improved from 6th to 4th in 2:19:56, with Hyogo also up from 8th to 5th in 2:19:59 despite weak runs from corporate league team members Yuta Bando and Kazuki Muramoto.

Okayama dropped from 5th to 6th in 2:20:06, with Fukuoka breaking into the top 10 at 7th in 2:20:12. 3rd last year, Tokyo was never higher than 8th, there most of the way from the Third Stage to the finish in 2:20:19. 2:06 marathoner Kyohei Hosoya had a good run at 5th on the anchor stage to bring Ibaraki in one place up from last year at 9th in 2:20:44, with Osaka also breaking into the top 10 at 10th in 2:20:55.

And with that, championship ekiden season comes to an end. There are still other, smaller races over the next month or so and a few important ones in the summer, but for the most part the focus now shifts to open road races and the track until the fall.

29th National Men's Ekiden

Hiroshima, 21 January 2024
47 teams, 7 stages, 48.0 km

Top Individual Stage Results
First Stage (H.S., 7.0 km)
1. Ryuto Kawahara (Nagasaki) - 19:31 - CR
2. Kaito Matsui (Saitama) - 19:37 (CR)
3. Riku Anjima (Gifu) - 19:38 (CR)
4. Yamato Hamaguchi (Nagano) - 19:38 (CR)
5. Sota Orita (Hyogo) - 19:38 (CR)

Second Stage (J.H.S., 3.0 km)
1. Yuma Tanaka (Wakayama) - 8:20
2. Riku Umeda (Hyogo) - 8:38
2. Ren Kitamura (Okayama) - 8:38
2. Ruion Tsubaki (Fukushima) - 8:38
5. Keigo Yamamoto (Tottori) - 8:39

Third Stage (open, 8.5 km)
1. Jun Kasai (Osaka) - 23:22 - CR
2. Toru Kubota (Saitama) - 23:32
2. Takashi Nanba (Fukui) - 23:32
4. Kotaro Shinohara (Chiba) - 23:38
5. Kazuya Shiojiri (Gunma) - 23:39
6. Kotaro Kondo (Aichi) - 23:44
7. Shota Nakano (Hiroshima) - 23:46
8. Yusuke Tamura (Yamaguchi) - 23:47
9. Taishi Ito (Nagano) - 23:50
10. Asahi Kuroda (Okayama) - 23:51

Fourth Stage (H.S., 5.0 km)
1. Soma Nagahara (Nagano) - 14:03
2. Yota Mashiko (Fukushima) - 14:21
3. Aoi Higaki (Okayama) - 14:22
4. Nozomi Sugaya (Tokyo) - 14:29
5. Sho Fukutomi (Hyogo) - 14:36

Fifth Stage (H.S., 8.5 km)
1. Junpei Yamaguchi (Nagano) - 24:47
2. Rui Suzuki (Chiba) - 24:54
3. Shoki Yamaguchi (Fukuoka) - 24:59
4. Kaisei Okada (Kyoto) - 25:05
5. Riito Ikema (Miyazaki) - 25:21

Sixth Stage (J.H.S., 3.0 km)
1. Sei Yoshida (Hokkaido) - 8:40
2. Rei Otoshi (Hiroshima) - 8:45
3. Daiki Miyakawa (Chiba) - 8:49
3. Tasuki Iwasawa (Gunma) - 8:49
5. Kain Inagaki (Hyogo) - 8:51
5. Hakuga Deguchi (Tokyo) - 8:51

Seventh Stage (open, 13.0 km)
1. Mebuki Suzuki (Nagano) - 36:52 - CR
2. Shunya Kikuchi (Tochigi) - 37:35
3. Tomoya Ogikubo (Saitama) - 37:37
4. Yuito Yamamoto (Niigata) - 37:50
5. Kyohei Hosoya (Ibaraki) - 37:55
6. Tomonori Yamaguchi (Fukushima) - 38:01
6. Jin Yuasa (Miyazaki) - 38:01
8. Takashi Ichida (Kagoshima) - 38:03
8. Hiroki Yamanaka (Shiga) - 38:03
10. Sodai Shimizu (Kyoto) - 38:07
10. Yuma Nishizawa (Shizuoka) - 38:07

Top Team Results
1. Nagano - 2:17:00 - CR
2. Saitama - 2:19:11
3. Chiba - 2:19:32
4. Kyoto - 2:19:56
5. Hyogo - 2:19:59
6. Okayama - 2:20:06
7. Fukuoka - 2:20:12
8. Tokyo - 2:20:19
9. Ibaraki - 2:20:44
10. Osaka - 2:20:55
11. Kagoshima - 2:20:57
12. Nagasaki - 2:21:12
13. Fukushima - 2:21:18
14. Hiroshima - 2:21:20
15. Gunma - 2:21:49

© 2024 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