japan running news

Day One results and report

After a record-breaking first day, 2015-2018 HakoneEkiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University held off last year's winner Tokai University to take the overall title in course record time. AGU started the return trip to Tokyo with a 3:22 lead over Tokai, enough for Tokai head coach Hayashi Morozumi to express pessimism about his team's chances of making up such a big deficit over Day Two's five stages totaling 109.6 km.

Not that they didn't try. On the day's first stage, the brutal 20.8 km Sixth Stage featuring a steep climb early on and then over 800 m of descent, mostly in the middle 10 km, two-time 1500 m national champion Ryoji Tatezawa broke the course record by 40 seconds to cut over a minute off AGU's lead. Tokai's next two runners Sakito Matsuzaki and Yohei Komatsu cut further into AGU's margin of error, but at the start of the day's longest stage, the 23.1 km Ninth Stage, Tokai was still exactly 2 minutes behind. Its…

It's yet another big weekend of racing in Japan. Saturday sees two of the year's biggest 10000 m meets, both in the greater Tokyo area. At Kanagawa's Keio University the Kanto Region University 10000 m Time Trials will have two tiers of scholarship money from the KGRR for any men who break 29 minutes or 29:20 and for women who go under 34 minutes or 34:20. Most of the top Hakone Ekiden programs will have big numbers of people there, with one of the most notable entries being the return of Meiji University's Hiroki Abe, 27:56.45 this time last year but out with injury so far this season.



Most of the top collegians though will be out in Tokyo's western suburbs at Hosei University for the Hachioji Long Distance Meet. 2019 World University Games half marathon medalists Akira Aizawa (Toyo Univ.) and Tatsuhiko Ito (Tokyo Kokusai Univ.) are entered, along with #1-ranked 1st-yr Ren Tazawa (Komazawa Univ.) who is also entered at Keio. All three won their stages earlier thi…

Japan picked up three meals in the first two days of athletics competition at the 2019 Napoli Summer Universiade in Italy, including silver medals in both the women's and men's 10000 m. After three aborted starts thanks to problems with the starting gun Rino Goshima (Chuo Univ.) got things moving on July 8 in the women's 10000 m, losing out in a close finish 34:03.31 to 34:04.65 to China's Deshun Zhang, with teammate Natsuki Sekiya (Daito Bunka Univ.) just as close behind her in the bronze medal position.

Sub-28 man Hiroki Abe (Meiji Univ.) kept it going on the 9th with a silver in the men's 10000 m in an even closer finish behind South African Mokorane Milton Kekana, 29:29.43 to 29:30.01. Hakone Ekiden First Stage king Kazuya Nishiyama (Toyo Univ.) was off his game, finishing just 8th over 40 seconds back from Abe in 30:10.65.



In the other two finals featuring Japanese athletes on the first two days of the Universiade, Japan's finalists both took last place. …

Tokyo Kokusai University made history Sunday night at Kanagawa’s Sagamihara Gion Stadium, winning the Kanto Region Qualifier for November’s National University Ekiden to make the national championship ekiden for the first time.

One of the wave of new programs to break onto the Hakone scene in recent years, won by a margin of just 13 seconds for the combined times of its eight runners in four heats of 10000 m, downing major established schools like Meiji University, Waseda University and Nittai University to take the top spot. A big part of that was first-year Vincent Yegon, who won the most competitive heat in 28:04.56 to give Tokyo Kokusai an edge on cumulative time. But with a margin of more than 2:40 over the final qualifying team, 5th-place Chuo Gakuin University, the rest of the team pulled its weight and would have almost certainly qualified even without the boost from Yegon.

Chuo University was the unlucky 6th-placer at less than 18 seconds behind Chuo Gakuin, about 2 seconds p…

The bronze medalist in the men's 3000 m steeplechase at last summer's Jakarta Asian Games, Kazuya Shiojiri turned in the only medal-winning performance on the opening day of the Asian Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar with another steeple bronze. Shiojiri spent most of the race comfortably in the silver medal position behind Kenyan-born eventual world-leading gold medalist John Koech (Bahrain), but on the last lap Avinash Sable (India) turned in an incredible kick to overtake Shiojiri in the home straight. Side-by-side with Sable over the last lap, Hossein Keyhani (Iran) kicked over a cone and ran a few strides inside the last corner but somehow escaped disqualification for 4th. Japan's Kosei Yamaguchi was 6th.


In both the women's 5000 m and men's 10000 m the gold and silver went to African-born Bahraini athletes with Indian runners taking bronze. In the 5000 m, Japan's 2018 World U20 3000 m gold medalist Nozomi Tanaka relatively listlessly led the first …

Riding a wave of rapid improvement since the start of the season, Kanagawa University pulled off a perfect race to beat favorites Tokai University and Aoyama Gakuin University and win its first National University Men's Ekiden Championships title since 1997 in one of the fastest times in event history.

Tokai beat defending national champion AGU at last month's Izumo Ekiden, and today's race was expected to be another head-to-head. But on the opening stage both were far from the front-end action. Likewise for #3-ranked Yamanashi Gakuin University, still on the mend from injuries to many of its best runners. In the absence of the three favorites, #4 through #7-ranked teams Komazawa University, Kanagawa, Waseda University and Toyo University formed a leading group from which 2015 national champion Toyo emerged as the front runner.

Tokai and AGU spent the next three stages working up to the lead group before both lost ground on the Fifth Stage and had to try to regain their f…

by Brett Larner

Japan sends a team of 44 athletes, 14 women and 30 men, to the rebranded World Junior Championships, hereout known as the World U20 Championships, this week in Bydgoszcz, Poland. 2015 World Youth Championships women's javelin throw gold medalist Haruka Kitaguchi (Nihon Univ.) is Japan's best chance for a medal, the only woman in the field to have thrown over 60 m.  Her teammate Mikako Yamashita (Kyushu Kyoritsu Univ.) looks like another medal contender, her 58.59 m ranking her 3rd in the javelin field.  The team features the current national high school champions in fourteen events, a few including Kitaguchi having made the top three at last month's Japanese National Championships and many ranking in the top ten in their events at World U20.  5th in the men's' 3000 m at last year's World Youth Championships, Hyuga Endo (Gakuho Ishikawa H.S.) doesn't fit any of those categories, but with new 3000 m and 5000 m bests of 8:01.95 and 13:48.13 sin…

https://www.minpo.jp/news/detail/2015090825188

translated and edited by Brett Larner
video by 遠藤清也



Just a month after his 17th birthday, Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. 2nd-year Hyuga Endo ran 8:01.95 for 3000 m at the Sept. 5 Premium Games in Sakata time trial meet in Sakata, Yamagata, breaking the Japanese high school and youth national records.  Endo's time, a PB by more than 15 seconds, took nearly 4 seconds off the 8:05.82 high school national record set 11 years ago by Yuki Sato (Team Nissin Shokuhin, then Saku Chosei H.S.) and almost 7 seconds off the 8:08.57 youth national record set in 2010 by Kazuto Nishiike (Team Konica Minolta, then Suma Gakuen H.S.).

Endo was paced by his Gakuho Ishikawa H.S. 3rd-year teammates Kazuyoshi Tamogami and Hiroki Abe until 1500 m where he went out front alone.  Keeping the high pace, he kicked hard over the last 400 m to the finish line to break both records.

Endo ran the 3000 m at July's World Youth Championships where he was overpowered by African…