japan running news

The winner of the first Marathon Grand Championships Olympic trials race is starting down a new road leading back to the Hakone Ekiden. Set to retire at the end of March, 2021 Tokyo Olympics marathon team member Shogo Nakamura (33, Fujitsu) will take over as head coach at Meiji Gakuin University in April in a quest for its first-ever Hakone appearance. According to a source involved in the situation, Nakamura has been hired to lead Meiji Gakuin to Hakone by the 2028-29 academic year. Nakamura's career as an athlete garnered great respect, especially his serious attitude toward competition and the patience and endurance he developed through marathon running. Still on the cusp of retirement, Nakamura is unproven as a leader. But last year he entered the Waseda University Graduate School of Sport Science with the aim of becoming a professional coach. While balancing his academic work with his racing he studied top sports management at the same place Susumu Hara , head coach of 9-t...

Tokyo Olympics marathon trials winner Shogo Nakamura will retire at the end of this fiscal year on Mar. 31, 2026. On Jan. 23 he released the following statement on his sponsor Fujitsu 's corporate team site. To everyone who has supported me I have decided to bring my career as a competitive athlete to its end and retire. I started running in 5th grade, and over the many years since then it has been my life. I'm really happy to be able to end it as part of the Fujitsu team. I've been with Fujitsu since I graduated from Komazawa University , and thanks to Fujitsu's flexibility and support I was able to keep Komazawa as my training base and make it all the way to the Tokyo Olympics. Getting there was a major milestone in my career and remains a prized memory. After reaching that height I started being with the Fujitsu team full-time, and under the leadership of head coach Tadashi Fukushima and the rest of the coaching staff I entered a new phase of my career aiming to co...

The biggest road race of the year is days away, with the Hakone Ekiden entering its second century on Jan. 2 and 3. 20 university teams and one select team race 217.1 km in 10 legs from central Tokyo to the mountains near Mt. Fuji and back, with Nippon TV broadcasting the whole thing live and nationwide to an audience in the tens of millions. TVer is streaming Day One here starting at 7:50 a.m. local time on Jan. 2, and Day Two here at 7:50 a.m. again. If you've got a VPN you should be good to go. JRN will be on-site at the Day One finish line and Day Two start line and will be doing some coverage on @JRNLive . At October's Izumo Ekiden and November's National University Ekiden Koku Gakuin University , Komazawa University and Aoyama Gakuin University went 1-2-3, and the main question at Hakone is whether it'll be the same order again. Komazawa is the heavyweight legacy school of the three, with 8 wins and 18 top 3 finishes at Hakone in the last 25 years under ex...

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships are coming up in just over 24 hours, but there's a limit to how much you can do and we want to focus what energy's left on the Hakone Ekiden's 100th running on Jan. 2 and 3. A quick preview of the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden is here , and if you've got a VPN you'll be able to watch streaming of TBS' broadcast here . If you're still on Twitter follow our live coverage on @JRNLive and @tri_chaser . Good luck to Honda in its shot at a third-straight win, and to everyone else running there. Nippon TV is broadcasting both days of the Hakone Ekiden , with a pre-race show at 7:00 a.m. and the start at 8:00 a.m. each day. Use a VPN to watch streaming of Day One here , and of Day Two here . We'll be covering the race on  @JRNLive and on-site from the Day One finish and Day Two start at Lake Ashi. The story at this year's Hakone Ekiden: Can Komazawa University become the first school to win all t...

It's no secret that Japan's university ekiden season is the pinnacle of the road racing year, and with the pinnacle of that pinnacle celebrating its 100th running this season it's now more than ever. Last year Komazawa University became one of the few schools ever to win all three of the big university men's ekidens, October's Izumo Ekiden , November's National University Ekiden and January's Hakone Ekiden. Popular opinion held that the loss of key seniors to graduation, especially fastest-ever Japanese-born collegiate 10000 m runner Ren Tazawa , would hurt its chances this season, but at Izumo today Komazawa came out to lay waste to that opinion. Iconic head coach Hiroaki Oyagi chose Komazawa's Hakone win this January to announce he was stepping back to an advisory role to allow former marathon NR breaker Atsushi Fujita to step forward as head coach, and in his high-pressure college ekiden debut in that role Fujita struck a tone of erudition in sayin...

Update: 24 hours after announcing its team for the Budapest World Championships, the JAAF announced a list of 5 additional men, 8 additional women, and 1 women's double. The numbers below have been updated to include them. Two big announcements in the last week from the JAAF of its rosters for this month's Budapest World Championships and next month's Riga World Road Running Championships. 28 women, 48 men and 35 officials make up the Budapest team, with multiple winners from last month's Asian Championships, national record holders, and at least two real medal prospects in women's javelin throw world leader Haruka Kitaguchi  and men's 20 km race walk defending champion Toshikazu Yamanishi . Especially on the women's side, a lot of athletes on the cusp of making the quotas for their event didn't get there, but a few did, like Asian 10000 m champ Ren Tazawa , pictured above with coach Hiroaki Oyagi  and 1:00:08 half marathoner Tomoki Ota  in St. Moritz, S...

2023 Hakone Ekiden champion Komazawa University 's 1st and 8th runners from its winning team Kensuke Tsubura  and Yuto Akahoshi were at the United Airlines NYC Half Sunday with head coach Hiroaki Oyagi and his wife Kyoko Oyagi as part of the partnership between race organizers NYRR and November's Ageo City Half Marathon set up by JRN in 2012. For both athletes it was the first time for them to ever go outside Japan. Akahoshi, a 3rd-year at Komazawa who ran his PB of 1:02:00 at Ageo last fall, lasted longer in the main pack, staying with the group that ended up filling 4th through 14th after the breakaway move up the East Side by world record holders Jacob Kiplimo and Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda and Moroccan Zouhair Talbi . In the last 5 km he dropped back to finish 14th in 1:03:49, just behind 2022 Fukuoka International Marathon winner Maru Teferi of Israel. "My goal was to come here and try to stay with some of the best athletes in the world, so I'm pretty disap...

Riding the momentum of its Day One win yesterday, Komazawa University dominated Day Two of the 99th Hakone Ekiden for the overall win. Combined with its CR wins at the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden, the Hakone victory made Komazawa only the 5th school to score the triple crown of major ekiden wins in a single season. It was the first triple crown of head coach Hiroaki Oyagi 's career, his biggest achievement at the biggest road race in the world, the one that has eluded him for decades. And, with his post-race announcement that he will step back from his role as head coach, it was his last. Komazawa started Day Two with a 30-second lead over last year's 6th-placer Chuo University and 2:03 over 2022 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University . Following the success of 1st-year Takuma Yamakawa on the uphill 5th leg yesterday, Oyagi opted to put 1st-year Aoi Ito on the steep downhill 6th leg. Ito excelled, outrunning Chuo's Haruto Wakabayashi by 17 seconds to ...

The Hakone Ekiden is almost here. The 99th running of Japan’s biggest sporting event happens Jan. 2-3, 21 collegiate relay teams of ten men running around a half marathon distance each from downtown Tokyo to Lake Ashi in the mountains near Mt. Fuji and back. All of it and more is broadcast live domestically starting at 7:00 a.m. by Nihon TV to tens of millions of fans and streamed on their Hakone site  starting at 7:50, with domestic streaming of both Day One and Day Two  also on TVer. There’s no official international streaming, but get yourself a VPN or subscribe to one of the online services that makes it possible to watch Japanese TV and you’re in. JRN will cover the entire race both days again this year on @JRNLive , so buy us a coffee and help make it possible . With course record wins at the season’s first two major ekidens, Izumo and Nationals , Komazawa University is the heavy favorite. The triple crown of major university ekiden wins is just about the only thing...

Keita Sato , holder of the high school national records for 1500 m (3:37.18), 3000 m (7:50.81) and 5000 m (13:31.19), has moved into the team dorm at Komazawa University following his graduation from Kyoto's Rakunan H.S. Sato will start classes at Komazawa in April. Packing his hopes and dreams into a suitcase for the trip up to Tokyo, Sato was unfazed by the three-hour shinkansen trip. "I went on longer trips than this for training camps in high school," he said. "This isn't that long." Sato's roommate at Komazawa will be Ibuki Kaneko , who ran well on the uphill Fifth Stage at the Hakone Ekiden and is starting his third year in April. Assigned to mentor is Kotaro Shinohara , just finishing his own first year, who beat Sato by one place at February's National Cross Country Championships. Shinohara welcomed the team's new recruit. "Sato's really strong," he said. "I'll have to work hard to not get beaten." As the ol...