Kyoto Wins National Women's Ekiden for 19th Time in 43 Years

Host team Kyoto was back on top at Sunday's National Women's Ekiden, taking the lead on the 2nd of the 42.195 km race's 9 legs and rolling on to win its 19th national title in the event's 43-year history in 2:15:26 with 4 individual stage wins.

Kyoto's lead runner Kokoro Nakachi was only 3 seconds behind First Stage winner Erika Tanoura of Chiba, and it didn't take much for its next runner Yua Sato to move into the top spot by 3 seconds. That lead grew to 50 seconds at the end of the Fifth Stage before a stage-winning run from Nagano's Nami Kawakami on the Sixth Stage cut it back to 33 seconds. But driven by stage wins from 7th runner Momoka Onishi and anchor Kaede Kawamura, from there to the end Kyoto pulled away to its final margin of victory of 2:26.

Nagano and Osaka were locked in a duel for 2nd for most of the way, but with only 3 km to go on the 10.0 km anchor stage Fukuoka and early leader Chiba caught up to make it a four-way race. Nagano's Yuna Wada fell off as the pace picked up when they were caught, and it came down to a 3-way battle over the track. Chiba's Nanaka Izawa made the first move, but a counter from Fukuoka's Miyaka Sugata shut her down. Sugata looked like she could hang on to 2nd, but in the home straight Osaka's Natsuki Omori went by to take 2nd in 2:17:52, Fukuoka 3rd in 2:17:53 and Chiba 4th in 2:17:57.

Nagano, Hiroshima, Okayama and Aichi rounded out the 8-deep podium. Former 5000 m NR holder Ririka Hironaka of Nagasaki ran down fast-starting current 5000 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka of Hyogo halfway through the anchor stage but came 14 seconds short of making the podium, taking 9th in 2:19:03 with Hyogo 13 seconds behind in 10th.

43rd National Women's Ekiden

Kyoto, 12 Jan. 2024

47 teams, 9 stages, 42.195 km

complete results

Top Team Results

1. Kyoto - 2:15:26

2. Osaka - 2:17:52

3. Fukuoka - 2:17:53

4. Chiba - 2:17:57

5. Nagano - 2:18:13

6. Hiroshima - 2:18:42

7. Okayama - 2:18:45

8. Aichi - 2:18:49

9. Nagasaki - 2:19:03

10. Hyogo - 2:19:16

Top Individual Stage Results

First Stage (6.0 km)

1. Erika Tanoura (Chiba) - 19:17

2. Airi Mashiba (Nagano) - 19:19

3. Sora Shinozakura (Kanagawa) - 19:20

4. Kokoro Nakachi (Kyoto) - 19:20

5. Kana Mizumoto (Osaka) - 19:22

Second Stage (4.0 km)

1. Mona Utsunomiya (Hokkaido) - 12:33

2. Yua Sato (Kyoto) - 12:37

3. Yuzu Nishide (Osaka) - 12:38

4. Nagisa Shimotabira (Miyazaki) - 12:40

5. Haruka Suguro (Kanagawa) - 12:41

Third Stage (3.0 km)

1. Koko Fujisawa (Gunma) - 9:30

2. Koa Setoguchi (Kagoshima) - 9:32

3. Yua Nagamori (Toyama) - 9:33

4. Sena Tatsukawa (Yamaguchi) - 9:37

5. Mayu Ishihara (Okayama) - 9:38

Fourth Stage (4.0 km)

1. Yumi Yamamoto (Kyoto) - 12:49

2. Asa Kobayashi (Hyogo) - 12:58

3. Sara Isobe (Aichi) - 13:02

4. Manami Nishiyama (Kanagawa) - 13:03

5. Azusa Sumi (Chiba) - 13:04

Fifth Stage (4.1075 km)

1. Nodoka Ashida (Kyoto) - 12:58

2. Mei Hosomi (Hiroshima) - 13:05

3. Yua Tsukamoto (Osaka) - 13:12

4. Mai Kubota (Nagano) - 13:17

5. Yui Onotora (Miyagi) - 13:19

Sixth Stage (4.0875 km)

1. Nami Kawakami (Nagano) - 12:51

2. Aika Murai (Osaka) - 12:56

3. Sayo Imanishi (Chiba) - 12:58

4. Tomo Muramatsu (Kyoto) - 13:08

5. Anna Shubulchek (Ibaraki) - 13:15

Seventh Stage (4.0 km)

1. Momoka Onishi (Kyoto) - 12:42

2. Anri Watanabe (Aichi) - 12:52

3. Rio Kawamura (Osaka) - 12:55

4. Kohana Dozono (Kagoshima) - 12:59

5. Mao Ishikawa (Chiba) - 13:03

Eighth Stage (3.0 km)

1. Ema Gendai (Ehime) - 9:46

2. Shiho Kurokawa (Toyama) - 9:52

3. Wakana Minami (Okayama) - 9:54

4. Kirari Takeda (Kagoshima) - 9:56

5. Aika Koreeda (Mie) - 10:02

Ninth Stage (10.0 km)

1. Kaede Kawamura (Kyoto) - 31:48

2. Nanaka Izawa (Chiba) - 32:08

3. Miyaka Sugata (Fukuoka) - 32:10

4. Ririka Hironaka (Nagasaki) - 32:11

5. Kana Kobayashi (Tokushima) - 32:27

Tokyo Olympics Marathon Trials Winner Nakamura Enters Waseda Grad School

An Olympian in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics, Shogo Nakamura (Fujitsu) announced on his social media that he has entered Waseda University 's Graduate School of Sport Science with the start of the new academic year this week. A graduate of Mie's Ueno Kogyo H.S. , Nakamura went to Komazawa University before joining Fujitsu in 2015. His senior year of high school he was 3rd overall and 2nd Japanese in the 5000 m at the National High School Track and Field Championships, and in the fall the same year he ran what was at the time the 7th-fastest high school mark ever, 13:50.38. At Komazawa he scored four individual stage wins across the three big university ekidens. In 2019 he won the MGC Race, Japan's marathon trials for the Tokyo Olympics, where he was 62nd in 2:22:23. Nakamura indicated that he would be studying "top sports management" under professor Takeo Hirata . "I'll be balancing competition and academics," Nakamura wrote. "I'm r...

Weekend Road and Track Roundup

A roundup of the main road and track action on the last weekend of Japan's 2024-25 academic and fiscal year: Doubling off a 2:07:06 PB at the Tokyo Marathon 4 weeks ago, Tatsuya Maruyama took bronze at the Asian Marathon Championships in Jiaxing, China in 2:11:56. Gold went to North Korea's Il Ryong Han in a breakaway 2:11:18, with silver medalist Tianyu Chen of China just ahead of Maruyama in 2:11:50. Japan's Shungo Yokota was a distant 4th in 2:14:00, with Japan-based Mongolian NR holder Ser-Od Bat-Ochir 6th in 2:15:14. Japanese women Kaede Kawamura and Natsumi Matsushita were 5th and 6th in 2:31:26 and 2:34:40, with medals going to China's Bing Wu , gold in 2:26:01, North Korea's Kwang-Ok Ri , silver right behind her in 2:26:07, and defending gold medalist Khishigsaikhan Galbadrakh landing in bronze this time in 2:28:56, her third sub-2:29 performance so far in 2025. Back home, four men broke 2:20 at the Fukui Sakura Marathon . Ko Kobayashi from the Shi...

Japan Names Marathon Teams for Tokyo World Championships

On Mar. 26 the JAAF named its women's and men's marathon teams for September's Tokyo World Championships. On the women's side the team has veterans Sayaka Sato and Yuka Ando off the strength of a runner-up finish for Sato in Nagoya this year and a win in Nagoya last year by Ando, and newcomer Kana Kobayashi , 23, who has risen quickly from being a fun runner at Waseda University last year to a 2nd-place finish in Osaka Women's this year. Paris Olympics 6th-placer Yuka Suzuki was named alternate after finishing 3rd behind Kobayashi in Osaka Women's. On the men's side the team is led by last year's Fukuoka International Marathon CR breaker Yuya Yoshida and this year's Osaka runner-up Ryota Kondo . The 3rd spot on the team is reserved for JMC Series winner Naoki Koyama , who hasn't cleared the 2:06:30 World Championships qualifying standard and has to wait for the May 4 qualifying deadline for confirmation that the 1184 points he has in the Roa...

japan running news

Search This Blog