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

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...

japan running news

Search This Blog