16 Women and 26 Men on the Current Olympic Trials Qualifier List

Last weekend's Nagoya Women's Marathon and the Tokyo Marathon the weekend before brought the main part of the first year of qualification for the Marathon Grand Championship Race, Japan's L.A. Olympics marathon trials to be held in Nagoya in October, 2027, to an end. There are still a few races like the Nagano Marathon and overseas World Athletics platinum label races this season where people might qualify, but for the most part we're not likely to see many new additions until August's Hokkaido Marathon, where the qualifying period opened last year. As of right now 16 women and 26 men have qualified, although the first woman to make the cut, Ai Hosoda, announced that she was retiring after Tokyo earlier this month.

Out of the 16 women to have qualified so far, Mikuni Yada is the fastest with her 2:19:57 debut at Osaka Women's in January. Including Hosoda that makes 2 qualifiers for the Edion corporate team, but Daihatsu has the biggest share of the field so far at 3 qualifiers, Rika Kaseda and Natsuki Omori in Nagoya and Mizuki Matsuda at Osaka Women's. It's a great achievement for head coach Miwako Yamanaka, one of the few female head coaches in the industry in Japan.

Mitsubishi Juko also has 3 qualifiers on the men's list, Ichitaka Yamashita getting there in Osaka, Ryota Kondo in Tokyo, and Hiroto Inoue at Beppu-Oita. But 3 independent runners not belonging to corporate teams are on the list too, the 2 fastest Suguru Osako and Kengo Suzuki and the slowest, Yudai Fukuda. Sora Shinozakura on the women's list is also an independent athlete, bringing the total to 4 out of 42 overall.

The Otsuka Seiyaku team has 3 qualifiers total so far, Rie Kawauchi and Kana Kobayashi on the women's list and Daisuke Uekado on the men's, and there are also 3 collegiate runners on the men's list, Asahi Kuroda of Aoyama Gakuin University, Shinsaku Kudo of Waseda University, and Itta Tameike of Chuo University. Other teams with 2 qualifiers so far include Tokyo Metro, Kurosaki Harima, and Toyota.

Interestingly, and a bit entertainingly, former Takushoku University roommates and multiple Olympic and world championships teammates Kentaro Nakamoto and Arata Fujiwara, both have 2 people on the corporate teams they now coach, in the field, Nakamoto's Yasukawa Denki having the edge with Ryo Goda running 2:06:51 in Osaka and Kiyoshi Koga 2:07:46 in Beppu-Oita, and Fujiwara's Suzuki having Tomohiro Fujimura, 2:08:49 in Tokyo, and Takumi Oishi, 2:08:51 in Fukuoka.

We'll follow up with an updated list as things evolve.

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...

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