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

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 (...

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