Toyota Going for the Repeat - New Year Ekiden Preview

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship kicks off 2025 early, with streaming starting at 9:00 a.m. local time January 1st and the race going off at 9:15. At 7 legs totaling 100 km it's the peak of the year for the corporate leagues, the reason they have teams and bring in Kenyans.

Last year Toyota led from the Second Stage to the finish, outrunning 2022-2023 winner Honda and 2017-2020 winner Asahi Kasei to take the national title for the first time since 2016. How is Toyota looking this year? On the one hand they've picked up fresh incoming talent like last year's Komazawa University captain Mebuki Suzuki. On the other, some of its key players like Tomoki Ota and Ren Tazawa have been dealing with injury, and at November's Chubu Region qualifying race Toyota lost by a minute to Toyota Boshoku, who broke the Chubu CR.

A lot of Honda's A-list was missing from its lineup at the East Japan Region qualifying race, where it was only 7th out of 10 qualifiers. Big teams don't always put their best people into the regional qualifying races, especially East Japan 4th-placer Fujitsu, so it's probably worth not reading too much into that result. But it wasn't encouraging.

Asahi Kasei won the Kyushu Region qualifier, missing 10000 m national champion Jun Kasai from its lineup but winning thanks to a great comeback run on the anchor stage by former NR holder Akira Aizawa. That said, its margin of victory was only 1 second, with last year's New Year Ekiden 4th-placer Kurosaki Harima turning in a great team performance that saw anchor Sota Fukutani run exactly the same time as Aizawa.

Toyota Boshoku, Fujitsu and Kurosaki Harima all have a shot at breaking into the top 3, but one of the biggest threats to Toyota, Honda and Asahi Kasei is East Japan winner GMO, home of Fukuoka International Marathon winner Yuya Yoshida. Yoshida broke the First Stage CR at the East Japan qualifier and was 40 seconds ahead of 2nd before going on to win Fukuoka in 2:05:16. A lot depends on his recovery since then, but with 3 other GMO runners having won their East Japan stages it's pretty likely GMO will do a lot better than its 8th-place finish last year.

Other regional winners SG Holdings, YKK and Chudenko weren't factors at the 2024 New Year Ekiden, finishing 19th, 23rd, 29th, but at the Hokuriku Region qualifier held as a single race with the Chubu Region YKK ran a 5-minute CR that put them 3rd overall behind Toyota Boshoku and Toyota. They could be interesting. 14th last year and 5th at the East Japan race, Subaru will be getting a lot of attention this year too for the corporate league debut of 3000 m SC NR holder Ryuji Miura.

Live tweeting isn't much of a thing any more, but JRN will be on-site in Maebashi for the race and we'll have some coverage on @JRNLive. See you then.

69th New Year Ekiden Entry List

Corporate Men's National Championship

Maebashi, Gunma, 1 Jan. 2025

times listed are average pace in regional qualifying race

Toyota Boshoku (Chubu) - 2:52.2 / km

Toyota (Chubu) - 2:53.1 / km

GMO (East Japan) - 2:54.3 / km

YKK (Hokuriku) - 2:54.9 / km

Asahi Kasei (Kyushu) - 2:55.5 / km

Toenec (Chubu) - 2:55.5 / km

Kurosaki Harima (Kyushu) - 2:55.6 / km

Yakult (East Japan) - 2:55.8 / km

Sunbelx (East Japan) - 2:56.1 / km

Aichi Seiko (Chubu) - 2:56.2 / km

Fujitsu (East Japan) - 2:56.4 / km

NTN (Chubu) - 2:56.4 / km

SG Holdings (Kansai) - 2:56.5 / km

Subaru (East Japan) - 2:56.6 / km

Logisteed (East Japan) - 2:56.8 / km

Aisan Kogyo (Chubu) - 2:57.1 / km

Chuo Hatsujo (Chubu) - 2:57.3 / km

Honda (East Japan) - 2:57.4 / km

Kao (East Japan) - 2:57.4 / km

JR Higashi Nihon (East Japan) - 2:57.5 / km

Yasukawa Denki (Kyushu) - 2:57.7 / km

Kyudenko (Kyushu) - 2:58.3 / km

Otsuka Seiyaku (Kansai) - 2:58.4 / km

Chudenko (Chugoku) - 2:58.4 / km

SID Group (East Japan) - 2:58.4 / km

Hiramatsu Byoin (Kyushu) - 2:58.7 / km

Sekino Kosan (Hokuriku) - 2:58.7 / km

Osaka Gas (Kansai) - 2:59.0 / km

Mitsubishi Juko (Kyushu) - 2:59.1 / km

Sumitomo Denko (Kansai) - 2:59.3 / km

Toyota Kyushu (Kyushu) - 2:59.7 / km

Chugoku Denryoku (Chugoku) - 3:00.0 / km

Nishitetsu (Kyushu) - 3:00.0 / km

Mazda (Chugoku) - 3:00.7 / km

JFE Steel (Chugoku) - 3:01.2 / km

Togami Denki (Kyushu) - 3:02.6 / km

Takeda Yakuhin (Chugoku) - 3:10.5 / km

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