japan running news

On Sept. 12 Nittai University announced that it will fire ekiden team head coach Masaaki Watanabe, 55, over the current power harassment scandal surrounding him. According to the university's public relations office, interviews by the alumni association with five current and one former team member reported multiple acts of violence by Watanabe including kicking athletes' legs and grabbing them by the chest.

The interviews also reported that Watanabe verbally abused and threatened student athletes and attacked their character. When runners fell off pace during workouts he was reported to have shouted, "Get the hell out of this university!" and, following the runners in a car, "I am going to f*cking run you over and kill you." Injured team members were also reported to have been subject to verbal humiliation by Watanabe, including, "Look at this f*cking cripple," and "You f*cking deserve it." Watanabe admitted the accusations but said tha…

Following revelations of power harassment in scandals involving the Nihon University football team coaching staff, the amateur boxing and gymnastics association and other bodies of authority across the Japanese sports world, on Sept. 7 the tabloid magazine Friday reported accusations of power harassment abuse by Masaaki Watanabe, 55, head coach of Hakone Ekiden powerhouse Nittai University. "I never want to see that guy's face again," the magazine quoted one former team member as saying. "As long as he's the head coach I can't run for this team. I really wanted to run Hakone one more time. If anyone would hire me I wanted to keep running for a corporate team. But instead I've come to hate running itself."

On Sept. 7 Nittai University responded to the abuse allegations against Watanabe, 55. According to the university's Public Relations department, the school is currently in the process of verifying the facts of the situation and plans to questi…

https://www.iaaf.org/news/report/barsosio-race-record-ceske-budejovice-half-ma

http://www.hochi.co.jp/sports/etc/20150930-OHT1T50064.html
https://twitter.com/3940highschool/status/649148340030930944

translated and edited by Brett Larner

As university ekiden season begins with the Oct. 12 Izumo Ekiden, their job hunting in its final stages, fourth-year runners from all the major universities are deciding their future paths one by one.  The biggest star of the 2015 Hakone Ekiden, the "Third God of the Mountain" Daichi Kamino (Aoyama Gakuin University) will go on to 2013-14 New Year Ekiden national corporate men's champion Konica Minolta, while 30 km collegiate national record holder Yuma Hattori (Toyo University), targeting the marathon at next year's Rio Olympics, plans to join 2015 New Year Ekiden winner Toyota.  The country's best university runners plot their courses from Hakone beyond to the world stage early.

Kamino's super-fast run up the Fifth Stage at this year's Hakone Ekiden powered Aoyama Gakuin on to the win and new legend …

https://twitter.com/kun304/status/646833692770332672/photo/1

translated and edited by Brett Larner

2014 Hakone Ekiden First Stage winner Hideto Yamanaka, a fourth-year at 2013 Hakone Ekiden champion Nittai University, has quit the school's ekiden team.  Left without its star runner, Nittai will shoot for its 68th-straight Hakone Ekiden appearance when it runs the Oct. 17 Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying race.

Yamanaka ran the Third Stage at the 2013 Hakone Ekiden as a first-year, playing a key role in Nittai's first overall Hakone win in 30 years.  As a second-year he won the 21.4 km First Stage in 1:01:25, with a 1:02:09 course record win two months later at the National University Half Marathon Championships cementing his position as a top-class collegiate athlete.  Shortly afterward, however, he suffered a long-lasting string of injuries that kept him out of competition throughout his third year until a surprise return at the start of his fourth year to win the 10000 m at M…

by Brett Larner

Compressed from its usual two-weekend format to one this year, the Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships started May 14 at Yokohama's Nissan Stadium.  In the day's main event, Yamanashi Gakuin University debuted its new Kenyan first-year Dominic Nyairo in the D1 10000 m.  Nyairo and two-time National University 10000 m champion Daniel Muiva Kitonyi (Nihon Univ.) led throughout the race, pursued by a large Japanese chase pack that shook down to just one runner, 2014 National University Half Marathon champion Hideto Yamanaka (Nittai Univ.).  Yamanaka, who sat out his entire junior year last year with injury, was hesitant to lead, but when he did make a move he and Nyairo shook off Muiva, turning the race into a head-to-head duel over the last lap.  Nyairo pulled away with a brilliant last 200 m to win by two seconds, but shortly after the race it was announced that he had been disqualified for stepping over the outer/inner start dividers at the be…

by Brett Larner

2014 was a mixed year for Japanese distance running.  Most of the good came from the under-25 generation that will be at its peak at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  More than a dozen high school boys including one 16-year-old broke 14 minutes for 5000 m, and at least four high school girls ran 9:01 or better for 3000 m, one winning Youth Olympics gold while doing it.  A 19-year-old woman ran an under-20 Japanese record 2:27:12, and a 22-year-old set a collegiate national record of 2:26:46.  Another 22-year-old went under 9 minutes for 3000 m.  Japanese university men ran times from 3:39.56 for 1500 m to 1:00:50 for the half marathon to an incredible 1:28:52 collegiate national record for 30 km by a runner just turned 20.  A 23-year-old set a 3000 m NR of 7:40.09, and a 24-year-old ran the fastest 10000 m ever by a Japanese man on Japanese soil, 27:38.99.  Among older runners ten Japanese men broke 2:10 for the marathon a total of eleven times, the fastest among them, 2:08:0…

by Brett Larner



19-year-old Nittai University second-year Hideto Yamanaka lived up to his superb 2014 Hakone Ekiden First Stage win today in Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park, taking nearly five minutes off his half marathon best to win the National University Half Marathon Championships in a course record 1:02:09.  Despite cold temperatures and on-and-off rain, Yamanaka led aggressively from the start before getting away in the final kilometers to win by more than twenty seconds over Waseda University's Daiki Taguchi and Koki Ido and Komazawa University's Yoshihiro Nishizawa and Shota Baba.

The momentum of Yamanaka and the others in the front pack pulled the entire field along, all of the top ten going sub-63, nine of them in PB times.  For the first time in history more than 200 men cleared 66 minutes in a single half marathon, a new world record which confirmed the upward trend in Japanese university men's performances that has only increased since Tokyo won the 2020 Olympi…

by Brett Larner

The Inter-University Athletic Union of Japan has released the entry lists for Sunday's National University Half Marathon Championships in western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park. With the rapidly increasing level of Japanese university men's distance running the once-minor half marathon championships have taken on increasing importance, three of the last four years seeing winning times under 63 minutes and 2012's race setting world records for depth with 193 men under 66 minutes.  1389 men are entered for this year's race, and with a consistent pattern of large numbers running aggressive paces throughout the season since Tokyo secured the 2020 Olympics this year's race could be the fastest and deepest yet.

On Feb. 2 Hiroto Inoue (Yamanashi Gakuin Univ.) ran the fastest half marathon ever by a Japanese 21-year-old, 1:01:39, and with that time he heads the entry list.  Inoue is on the Japanese national team for the Mar. 29 World Half Marathon Championsh…

by Brett Larner

This ekiden season I've had a few thoughts kicking around, and watching this week's Hakone Ekiden a few of them became clearer.  These are still in progress, but at the moment this is what I'm thinking in terms of running as a spectator sport and about the quality of Japanese men's distance running right now.



Quality: Japanese men's running is coming up very, very quickly.  I was in the lead car at November's Ageo City Half Marathon, where 18 men, 17 of them university runners, broke 63 minutes.  As it was going on we all thought it was a slow race because there were so many people running that pace all the way, no separation at all in the mass of the pack. See the JRN header photo above, taken just past halfway.  That's pretty unusual in Japan, especially at the university level; generally you'll get a handful of guys who run an aggressive pace and a mass running dead on a safe pace, 3:00/km in a half marathon, for example.

The First …

by Brett Larner
photos by Kazuyuki Sugimatsu

click here for Hakone Ekiden Day Two results and report



After losing to Nittai University in tough conditions last year, Hakone Ekiden course record holder Toyo University took a big step toward a return to the top, winning Day One of the 90th Hakone Ekiden in 5:27:13, the second-fastest time ever for the five stage, 108.0 km Day One Course behind only Toyo's own 5:24:45 course record.  Critical to the team's success were sub-28 / sub-62 identical twin seniors Keita and Yuta Shitara, each of who won his stage in its all-time 4th-fastest mark.  Rival Komazawa University, on a quest to become just the fourth school to complete the triple crown after winning this season's Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden Championships, was only 59 seconds behind in 5:28:12 to become the second-fastest team ever on the Day One course and leaving plenty of room for it to challenge Toyo for the overall win on the return trip tomorrow.  Pre-ra…

by Brett Larner



Komazawa University　rode the momentum of its course record win at last month's Izumo Ekiden to score its third-straight and eleventh total national title Nov. 3 at the 45th National University Men's Ekiden Championships.  2013 national university half marathon champion Shogo Nakamura blew things open on the 14.6 km First Stage by opening a gap of over 30 seconds that never closed.  Five of Komazawa's eight runners scored stage bests to seal the deal, anchor and captain Shinobu Kubota falling just short of breaking last year's overall course record of 5:12:43 for the full 106.8 km distance as he crossed the line in 5:13:09.

By far the star of the show was Komazawa junior Kenta Murayama.  Let's say that again. Kenta Murayama.  Remember that name.  Kenta Murayama.  After crushing Japanese domestic 10000 m record holder Tsuyoshi Ugachi's stage record at Izumo last month, Murayama did the inconceivable and ran 39:24 to take 8 seconds off the 14.0 km …

by Brett Larner

With a few exceptions cross-country has never been a major part of Japanese long-distance methodology, but each World Cross-Country Championships sees a roster featuring many of Japan's best.  London Olympian Hitomi Niiya (Team Univ. Ent.) heads the senior women's squad for Sunday's Worlds in Bydgoszcz, Poland, accompanied by the runner-up in last weekend's National Corporate Half Marathon Championships, Hanae Tanaka (Team Daiichi Seimei) and top-ranked collegiate Ayuko Suzuki (Nagoya University).  2013 Hakone Ekiden winner Nittai University fields three members of its champion team, Takumi Honda and Keigo Yano in the senior men's race and 1st-year Hideto Yamanaka leading the junior men's squad.  Alongside Yamanaka is Tadashi Isshiki of 2012 National High School Ekiden champion Toyokawa H.S.  Curiously, the senior men's team includes only four athletes, with top-ranked men Suguru Osako (Waseda Univ.), Yuki Matsuoka (Team Otsuka Seiyaku) and …