Skip to main content

February's National XC Named as Selection Race for 2026 World XC Team

The JAAF has announced that the 2025 National Cross Country Championships on Feb. 22 will act as the selection race for the senior teams for the 2026 World Cross Country Championships to be held Jan. 10 in Tallahassee, U.S.A. for both the senior men's and women's 10 km, up to 8 athletes will be selected, with 6 ultimately running. Team scoring is based upon each team's first 4 finishers. Member of the 10000 m team at September's Tokyo World Championships will be given priority in World XC team selection.

The JAAF is planning a separate selection race in November for the U20 teams. Nominations to the 8 km mixed relay will be based on results in the 2 km race at the 2025 National Cross Country Championships, to be held at Fukuoka's Umi no Naka Michi Kaihin Park.

source article:

Comments

Most-Read This Week

Chinese Influencer Intrudes on Hakone Ekiden Fifth Stage to Shoot Video of Himself Running with AGU's Wakabayashi

A Chinese influencer ignored restrictions and race officials' directions and ran on the Hakone Ekiden course to shoot video during the race's uphill Fifth Stage on Jan. 2. He later apologized. The influencer, Shen Haoze , posts about running and marathons, and on the Chinese social media site Weibo has nearly 5 million followers. A clip of him running on the closed road course of the Hakone Ekiden's Fifth Stage alongside course record setter Hiroki Wakabayashi of defending champion Aoyama Gakuin University and shooting video went viral on social media. Race officials can be heard warning him to get off the course due to the danger to the competing athletes, but Shen ignored them, setting off a firestorm of criticism from users in both Japan and China. Comments included, "These athletes are putting their whole lives into the race. What the hell does he think he's doing?" and "He has no regard for the danger to them." Shen later posted an apology on...

Aoyama Gakuin Breaks Hakone Ekiden CR for Second Year in a Row

2024 Hakone Ekiden course record breaker Aoyama Gakuin University was 3:16 up on 2023 winner Komazawa University at the end of Day One of the Hakone 2025, an even bigger margin than last year when it was 2:38 ahead of Komazawa and went on to win the 217.1 km overall race in a course record 10:41:25, beating Komazawa by almost 7 minutes. There was almost no chance Komazawa could close the gap today on the return trip of Hakone Day Two. But that doesn't mean they didn't try. Komazawa 3rd year Aoi Ito was just off the CR on the ~800 m downhill 6th leg in 57:38, but even with a run that good he lost ground when AGU's Akimu Nomura proved a hypothetical, breaking the 57-minute barrier for the 20.8 km leg with a 30-second CR of 56:47. Post-race Nomura said that he had spent the whole year training to run 56, and he executed perfectly. And put AGU 4:07 ahead, hopeless, except for a ray of hope. Injured for most of 2024 and running his first race since March on only 6 weeks of...

The 2025 Hakone Ekiden by the Numbers

It was another record-breaking year at the Hakone Ekiden . All 13 of the course records, the 10 individual stages, the Day One and Day Two courses and the overall course, have been set since 2019, and out of those 6 fell this time, 2 of them broken by multiple athletes or teams. All of them had performances in at least their all-time top 6, and 9 of them in their all-time top 3. First Stage (21.3 km) - all-time #4 Second Stage (23.1 km) - CR, all-time #2, all-time #3, all-time #9 Third Stage (21.4 km) - all-time #4, all-time #5, all-time #7 Fourth Stage (20.9 km) - all-time #2, all-time #7, all-time #8, all-time #9 Fifth Stage (20.8 km uphill) - CR, all-time #3 Sixth Stage (20.8 km downhill) - CR, all-time #5, all-time #9 Seventh Stage (21.3 km) - CR, all-time #4 (x2), all-time #7 Eighth Stage (21.4 km) - all-time #6, all-time #9, all-time #10 Ninth Stage (23.1 km) - all-time #6, all-time #10 Tenth Stage (23.0 km) - all-time #2, all-time #7 Day One (107.5 km) - all-time #2...