National Champion Kamimura Gakuen H.S. Girls Win Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden

The 2023 National High School Ekiden champion Kamimura Gakuen H.S. girls ended their season with another win, taking 1st at the 35th Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden Sunday in Fukuoka. Running against corporate league competition like 2023 Queens Ekiden winner Sekisui Kagaku and high school Nationals 3rd and 4th placers Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. and Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S., Kamimura Gakuen got off to a slow start when leading runner Rina Kurokami was only 13th on her stage and 24 seconds off the lead.

But having delivered Kamimura Gakuen the national title last month with an incredible anchor stage run, its second runner Caroline Kariba showed again that she's a budding international-level talent, chopping 18 seconds off the 3.8 km Second Stage CR, an amazing 47 seconds fastest than the previous record by a high school athlete. That was enough to put Kamimura Gakuen out front by 18 seconds over the Kyocera corporate team and 42 seconds ahead of Kunei Joshi Gakuin. Its lead stayed steady over the next two stages, with Kyocera hanging on to the top corporate spot and Ritsumeikan Uji moving up to 2nd high school 6 seconds back from Kyocera.

Corporate teams ended the race with a 10.4 km anchor stage that was split into two parts for the high school division. Higo Ginko anchor Miku Sakai turned in a stage-winning 33:26 to overtake Kyocera anchor Mio Kuroda and Ritsumeikan Uji's Momoka Onishi, crossing the finish line in 2nd overall in 1:28:15. Onishi was only 4 seconds behind, giving Ritsumeikan Uji 3rd overall in 1:28:19. Kyocera was 2nd in the corporate division in 1:28:42 and Sysmex 3rd in 1:29:25, with 3rd-place high school team Kunei Joshi Gakuin holding Sysmex off by 6 seconds for 5th overall in 1:29:19. Running a mostly B-team, national corporate champion Sekisui Kagaku was 9th overall in 1:30:37 despite an 11:37 CR on the 3.8 km Fourth Stage by Rina Sasaki.

35th Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden

Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, 21 January, 2024

31 teams, 5 stages (6 for H.S. teams), 27.2 km

Top Individual Stage Results

First Stage (5.3 km) - Misaki Shitamori (Kitakyushu Shiritsu H.S.) - 17:13

Second Stage (3.8 km) - Caroline Kariba (Kamimura Gakuen H.S.) - 11:04 - CR

Third Stage (3.9 km) - Yumi Yamamoto (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) - 12:42

Fourth Stage (3.8 km) - Rina Sasaki (Sekisui Kagaku) - 11:37 - CR

Fifth Stage (open, 10.4 km) - Miku Sakai (Higo Ginko) - 33:26

Fifth Stage (H.S., 5.9 km) - Chiseno Ikeda (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) - 19:26

Sixth Stage (H.S., 4.5 km) - Rin Setoguchi (Kamimura Gakuen H.S.) - 14:29

Top Team Results

High School

1. Kamimura Gakuen H.S. - 1:27:54

2. Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. - 1:28:19

3. Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. - 1:29:19

4. Ginga Gakuin H.S. - 1:30:19

5. Kitakyushu Shiritsu H.S. - 1:31:47

6. Suma Gakuen H.S. - 1:31:54

7. Higashi Osaka Keiai H.S. - 1:32:24

8. Yamada H.S. - 1:33:44

9. Luther Gakuin H.S. - 1:34:00

10. Kyushu Kokusai H.S. - 1:34:36

Open

1. Higo Ginko - 1:28:15

2. Kyocera - 1:28:42

3. Sysmex - 1:29:25

4. Iwatani Sangyo - 1:30:07

5. Sekisui Kagaku - 1:30:37

6. Universal Entertainment - 1:30:41

7. Route Inn Hotels - 1:31:57

8. Toto - 1:32:34

9. Kitakyushu Select Team - 1:36:38

Multiple National Records This Weekend

Olympic and World champion Haruka Kitaguchi got the biggest headlines among Japanese athletes this weekend, overcoming a rough last year and a half that included injury and a coaching change to break her own javelin throw NR by over a meter and a half to win the inaugural WA Ultimate Championship in Budapest. U20 WR and Asian AR holder Ziyi Yan opened with a big 68.05, 0.67 m further than Kitaguchi's best-ever from back in 2023. That could have been the end, but Kitaguchi came back from a 61.15 m first attempt to throw a massive 68.92 m NR on her next one, ultimately enough for the win. She still has a long way to go to match the 18-year-old Yan's 71.74 m from May, but it was a clear statement that Kitaguchi is back. Back home at the National Corporate Track and Field Championships in Kyoto, women's pole vault NR holder Misaki Morota continued a solid comeback season of her own, bettering her NR from May by 1 cm with a 4.51 m on her first attempt. Morota took another 3...

On the Loss of the ARRS Database

At some point in the last few months I discovered that both versions of the ARRS database, the static one and the searchable version , are gone. Last week David Monti posted a link to the ARRS history of an event he covered in Race Results Weekly, I guess copying and pasting a link from last year without looking at it, and that reminded me to write something about the loss of the database. The Association of Road Racing Statisticians was basically a one-man show operated from the remote Northern California shores by Ken Young . When the site existed its intro read: The Association of Road Racing Statisticians (ARRS) is an independent, non-profit organization that collects, analyses and publishes results and statistics regarding elite distance running at distances 3000m and longer...The data of ARRS is stored in the ARRS database, which has more than 1.3 million performances from more than 240,000 races by more than 95,000 elite and sub-elite distance runners worldwide...This website ...

Keita Satoh Running New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile

1500 m U20 NR holder Keita Satoh (Nike Swoosh TC) is running this weekend's New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile , the first time that a Japanese man has been invited in the race's 45-year history. In university Sato had to change focus away from middle distance to the half marathon-scale lengths of the Hakone Ekiden stages, but since graduating in March and relocating to Flagstaff he has refocused on the 1500 m, going from 3:43.19 in April in his first 1500 m in almost 4 years to 3:38.30 over the course of 5 races. Fifth Avenue will be his last race before heading back to Japan for one more track 1500 m and some down time. Men's entries with best 1500 m times in last 3 years: Stefan Nillessen (NED) - 3:29.23 (2025) Flavien Szot (FRA) - 3:30.74 (2025) Oliver Hoare (AUS) - 3:31.07 (2024) Jake Heyward (GBR) - 3:31.18 (2026) Titouan Le Grix (FRA) - 3:31.46 (2026) Romain Mornet (FRA) - 3:31.62 (2025) Adam Spencer (AUS) - 3:31.83 (2026) Pieter Sisk (BEL) - 3:31.85 (2025) Gary Martin (...

japan running news

Search This Blog