Princess Ekiden Preview and Streaming

Sunday is the Princess Ekiden, the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden, the season-ending national championship race for corporate women's teams. The top 8 placers at last year's Queens Ekiden, Sekisui Kagaku, Japan Post, Panasonic, Shiseido, Daihatsu, Daiichi Seimei, Tenmaya and Iwatani Sangyo, auto-qualified for 2024, leaving the rest of the league's teams to line up in Fukuoka at the Princess Ekiden in hopes of joining them. 30 teams will compete for 16 places at the Queens Ekiden, each with a team of 6 running a total of 42.195 km. TBS is broadcasting the race live starting at 11:50, with streaming on Youtube.

16th at Queens last year, Kyudenko has scratched from Sunday's race due to athlete injuries preventing them from having enough people ready to run. 22nd at Queens, Yamada Holdings is also out because it couldn't field 6 runners, one reason being the transfer of one of its star runners, Sakiho Tsutsui, to Universal Entertainment. Their absence opens to door for two of the teams on the cusp to make it this time.

Up top on the entry list it's pretty safe to assume that at least the top 10 teams will make it. #1-ranked Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo's entry list includes 5000 m Paris Olympian Wakana Kabasawa, and former collegiate 10000 m record holder Narumi Kobayashi is also on their list after a long time away with injury. #3-ranked Uniqlo features 1500 m Paris Olympic team member Yume Goto.

Tsutsui isn't on Universal's roster, but down near the bottom of the top 10 Shimamura's list does include recent transfer Yuka Ando. The next team below them, Hitachi, doesn't have a Kenyan in its lineup this time around, leaving it vulnerable to some of the teams closer to the cutoff line like Nitori and Toyota Jidoshokki that do.

Speaking of vulnerability, bib #14 Wacoal is hurt by Ando's transfer to Shimamura, and with only 7 runners on its list it's a little susceptible to potential race day sickness or injury issues. Below them, as the 15th and 16th-ranked Toyota Jidoshokki and Daiso stand to benefit from Kyudenko and Yamada's DNS status.

Past that point, the list includes formerly strong teams like Sysmex, Noritz, Toto and Denso, any of which would love to make it back into the fold, bank teams 18 Ginko, Kagoshima Ginko and Higo Ginko, and relative newcomers like Bears, Tokyo Metro, and first-timers Shin Nihon Jusetsu Group. SNJG has exactly six runners on its entry list and is even more vulnerable to a race morning setback than Wacoal.

Princess Ekiden Start List

Fukuoka, 20 Oct. 2024

30 teams, 6 stages, 42.195 km

top 16 qualify for Queens Ekiden

complete field listing

1. Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo

2. Edion

3. Uniqlo

4. Route Inn Hotels

5. Starts

6. Otsuka Seiyaku

7. Universal Entertainment

9. Kyocera

10. Shimamura

11. Hitachi

12. Senko

13. Nitori

14. Wacoal

15. Canon

16. Toyota Jidoshokki

17. Daiso

18. Sysmex

19. Ehime Ginko

20. Bears

21. 18 Ginko

22. Kagoshima Ginko

23. SID Group

24. Tokyo Metro

25. Noritz

26. Memolead

27. Toto

28. Aichi Denki

29. Higo Ginko

30. Denso

31. Shin Nihon Jusetsu Group

Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)

After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...

Nat'l University Ekiden Updates Here

Looks like I just went over my update limit on Twitter - sorry, it's the first time I've tried to use it for this. I'll look for another option next time. In the meantime I'll add updates to the comments below. Not sure if that has a max too but I guess we'll find out. Update: Part one of the Nationals commentary can be found here .

How it Happened

Ancient History I went to Wesleyan University, where the legend of four-time Boston Marathon champ and Wes alum Bill Rodgers hung heavy over the cross-country team. Inspired by Koichi Morishita and Young-Cho Hwang’s duel at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics I ran my first marathon in 1993, qualifying for Boston ’94 where Bill was kind enough to sign a star-struck 20-year-old me’s bib number at the expo. Three years later I moved to Japan for grad school, and through a long string of coincidences I came across a teenaged kid named Yuki Kawauchi down at my neighborhood track. I never imagined he’d become what he is, but right from the start there was just something different about him. After his 2:08:37 breakthrough at the 2011 Tokyo Marathon he called me up and asked me to help him get into races abroad. He’d finished 3rd on the brutal downhill Sixth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden, and given how he’d run the hills in the last 6 km at Tokyo ’11 I thought he’d do well at Boston or New York. “I...

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