japan running news

The last big women's race of championship ekiden season, the Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden saw 8 corporate teams square off against 19 of the top high school teams in the country over a 27.2 km race. For corporate leaguers that was divided into 5 legs, with the final leg, 10.4 km, split into two legs for the high school teams. Kairi Ikeno put National High School Ekiden 8th-placer Suma Gakuen H.S. out front on the 5.3 km First Stage, missing the CR by 2 seconds in 16:51. Only 17th at the Queens Ekiden corporate national championships, Kyocera was 5 seconds out front by the end of the 3.8 km Second Stage, but that didn't last long when Yume Yabutani ran a 12:35 CR on the 3.9 km Third Stage to put National High School Ekiden runner-up Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. in the overall lead by 23 seconds. That lead stayed exactly the same over the 3.8 km Fourth Stage, while from behind Denso , which had failed to qualify for the Queens Ekiden, closed to 15 seconds b...

Championship ekiden season kicks off Sunday with the Queens Ekiden , the corporate women's national championship race in Sendai, 42.195 km in 6 legs with 24 teams competing to make the 8-deep podium. TBS has the live broadcast starting at 11:50 a.m. local time, with streaming starting on Youtube at 12:10 p.m. Japan Post won its 4th national title last year, running down 2023 winner Sekisui Kagaku and CR holder Shiseido over the 2nd half of the race to take the win. Its entire lineup from last year returns, with a new addition to its 10-runner entry roster in former Meijo University captain Nanase Tanimoto . Sekisui Kagaku is missing one of its strongest people from last year, First Stage winner Erika Tanoura , but has picked up 2023 World University Games 5000 m bronze medalist Risa Yamazaki from Nittai University . A surprise 3rd last year, Shimamura also returns its entire lineup led by Anna Suzuki and Yuna Takahashi . Shiseido ended up 8th last year, the last place earnin...

Sunday is the first big race of championship ekiden season, the Queens Ekiden in Sendai, the season-ending national championship for corporate women. 24 teams race 42.195 km in 6 legs, with the top 8 scoring places for 2025. TBS' live nationwide broadcast starts at 11:50, with multi-camera streaming on Youtube above. Last year Sekisui Kagaku won by almost a minute and a half, and with Paris Olympian Yuma Yamamoto , 2023 World Championships marathoner Sayaka Sato on its entry list and collegiate 1500 m record holder Mizuki Michishita having come on board this season it looks like a contender for another win. But last year's runner-up Japan Post got a big boost this season with the addition of its first non-Japanese member, two-time double 1500 m and 3000 m high school champion Caroline Kariba . The Queens Ekiden limits non-Japanese athletes to a 3.8 km leg, so it'd be tough for Kariba to bridge a 1:25 gap by herself with that little ground to work with. But what she can...

Championship ekiden season wraps up Sunday with its last two big events. In Kitakyushu, the 35th Kitakyushu Women's Invitational Ekiden brings together top high school, college and corporate league teams to race a short 27.2 km in five stages, with the longest leg split in two for the high school teams. University teams are absent this time except for one select team made up of women from the area, while the corporate league division has nine teams and the high school division 22 plus another select team. 2023 Queens Ekiden national champion Sekisui Kagaku is the top seed, its entry roster including members of its national title-winning lineup, Yuma Yamamoto , Rina Sasaki and Chikako Mori . Its closest competition is Queens 8th-placer Iwatani Sangyo , which has five of its six runners from the national championships entered including Kaede Kawamura , winner of the anchor stage at last weekend's National Women's Ekiden . 2023 National High School Ekiden winner Kamimura ...

The main sponsor of the Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying event for next month's Queens Ekiden national corporate women's championship race, the Iwatani Sangyo women won Sunday's 6-stage 42.195 km race for the first time. Out strong in 2nd with good runs from first two runners Kaede Kawamura and Rino Maeda , Iwatani Sangyo went into 1st on the 10.7 km Third Stage thanks to Rio Wakai and stayed there the rest of the way, ultimately winning by 45 seconds over Route Inn Hotels . 5th runner Madoka Nakano even scored a stage win, playing a big part in the team's runaway victory. With the Olympic marathon trials having happened only a week earlier, a rule was in place this time that any team that had had someone qualify for the trials only had to finish the Princess Ekiden to make Nationals regardless of whether they made the qualifying bracket of the top 16 places. That changed the dynamic of the race a bit, with historically higher-tier teams like Tenmaya and U...

After representing Japan in last fall's Doha World Championships women's marathon, on June 16 it was learned that Madoka Nakano , 28, has left the Noritz corporate team and signed with the Iwatani Sangyo team. Nakano joined Noritz in 2010 after graduating from Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin High School . She placed 4th at last year's Osaka International Women's Marathon to make the Doha team, where she was 11th overall in the World Championships marathon. Iwatani Sangyo was founded in 2017 and is based in Mino, Osaka. Its head coach is Hisakazu Hirose , 54, who helped coach Mizuki Noguchi to the gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics marathon. Joining the team on the 16th, Nakano was optimistic, saying, "In this new environment I want to work hard to get to the national team level again. I want to make an impact in the ekiden too." source article: https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/sports/202006/0013428450.shtml translated by Brett Larner photo © 2019 Brett...

On Oct. 24 it was learned that 1996 Atlanta Olympics marathoner and former 10000 m Japanese national record holder Izumi Maki died of breast cancer Oct. 18 at her home in Mino, Osaka. She was 49 years old. Her coach during her days at the Globally and Wacoal corporate teams, Nobuyuki Fujita , 78, said that he last saw Maki in July at a reunion event for Wacoal alumni. "She didn't seem well at the time," he recalled. "I had heard that she was anti-cancer drug treatment, but it is still a shock." Hisakazu Hirose , 53, assistant coach to Maki in those days and currently head coach of the Iwatani Sangyo team, visited to mourn her death on the day she passed away. Hirose last saw her in March, but at that time, he said, "She seemed totally normal. She wasn't the sort of person who would have just given up. When I saw her after she passed away it looked as though she was only sleeping, that if you called out to her she would answer. I couldn't bel...

http://www.sanspo.com/sports/news/20170330/ath17033017380002-n1.html translated by Brett Larner The Iwatani Sangyo corporation held a press conference in Osaka on Mar. 30 to announce the launch of its new women's ekiden team on Apr. 1.  Head coach Hisakazu Hirose , who guided Mizuki Noguchi to the 2004 Athens Olympics women's marathon gold medal, spoke of his ambitions for the team, telling the media, "There are three years left until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  I want to try for it." Nanami Aoki , who stood at the peak of the high school and university ekiden scene as part of the Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. and Ritsumeikan Univ. teams, and the other members of the initial squad of six were introduced along with the team's orange uniform.  The team dormitory in its home base of Mino, Osaka is set to be completed in September.  Coach Hirose commented, "Our first competition will be May's Kansai Jitsugyodan Track and Field Championships.  My goal is to cul...