japan running news

No big surprises at the New Year Ekiden , where 2025 kicked off with a battle between favorites Toyota , Honda and Asahi Kasei that came down to a sprint finish in the last 800 m of the 7-leg, 100 km race. 2017-2020 New Year Ekiden winner Asahi Kasei took the lead from the start with an opening leg win by Sonata Nagashima . On the longest leg, the 21.9 km Second Stage, Yuto Imae from the team most expected to challenge the big three, GMO , made it to the front, but with a great run from Tomoki Ota the defending champs Toyota took the lead on the Third Stage. Samuel Kibathi held on over the short Fourth Leg, but on the Fifth Leg Yusuke Nishiyama showed fatigue from his 2:06:54 at Fukuoka a month ago and was run down by Olympic steepler Ryoma Aoki from 2022-2023 New Year winner Honda and Asahi Kasei's Shuho Dairokuno . Looking very strong over a longer distance than he'd usually run, Aoki opened a 10-second lead on Dairokuno that Honda's 6th runner Toru Kubota turned...

We're deep into championship ekiden season. Over the last two weekends the six regions making up the corporate leagues held their qualifying races for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships. The New Year Ekiden is one of the only national-level championship ekidens that doesn't give its podium finishers auto-qualifying spots for the next year, meaning every team has to run the regional races every November. It's not hard to see how that eats into the fall marathon season and how doing it the same way they do for all the other big ekidens, including the corporate women's national championships later this month, and having the top teams auto-qualify, would open up the fall schedule and improve Japan's performances in men's marathoning. But it is what it is right now. In place of an auto-qualifying spot for podium finishers, the national corporate federation redistributes the wealth of qualifying slots available in each region based ...

There are a lot of Japanese athletes racing overseas this weekend, but at home the main action is the National University Women's Half Marathon Sunday in Matsue. Last year's runner-up Rio Einaga of Osaka Gakuin University and 3rd and 5th-placers Saki Harada and Nanase Tanimoto from six-time national champion Meijo University lead the entry list, with their top competition including Saki Arai of Daito Bunka University , the anchor stage winner at December's Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national championship, Yuiri Ogata , Sakurako Yanai and Momoko Shimada from Mt. Fuji runner-up team Nittai University , and Yui Yoshii , Momona Yotsumoto and Mariya Noda from 3rd-place team Daito Bunka University . Complete entry list here . Overseas, the biggest block of Japanese athletes will be at Sound Running's The TEN in California. With a best of 31:34.39 Mikuni Yada (Edion) is the only Japanese woman in the meet, running the 10000 m Paris section. Hibiki Obara (Aoyama...

Kumamoto's Kanakuri Memorial Meet kicked off Japan's outdoor track season Saturday. In cold and windy conditions Hakone Ekiden great Vincent Yegon made his debut for two-time New Year Ekiden champ Honda with a win in a four-way battle over the last lap, dropping Samson Ndirangu (Sunbelx) in the last 50 m for 1st 27:37.85 to 27:39.67. Tomoki Ota (Toyota) was 3rd in 27:42.49, with collegiate half marathon champ Kotaro Shinohara of Hakone Ekiden winner Komazawa University 4th in 27:43.13, the 4th-best ever by a Japanese-born collegiate man. The women's 10000 m had only five athletes on the starting line, and it was 2022 National Corporate Half Marathon champion Dolphine Omare (U.S.E.) all the way. Omare clocked 31:44.67, over 30 seconds up on top Japanese woman Misaki Hayashida (Kyudenko). Hayashida was 2nd in 32:15.97, with all four Japanese women clearing 32:45. The men's 5000 m was split into six heats, with Heat 6 winner Emmanuel Korir (Mitsubishi Juko) turni...

It wouldn't be ekiden season without another busy weekend on the roads and track. On the track, Yokohama's Nittai University celebrates the 300th edition of its famous time trials series by banning spectators again as corona numbers climb back upward across Japan. Saturday features 5 heats of men's 10000 m and 4 heats of women's 3000 m and 5000 m, with marathoners Reia Iwade (Denso) and Shiho Kaneshige (GRlab Yamaguchi) matching up against Kenyans Tabitha Njeri Kamau (Sumitomo Denko), Jecinta Nyokabi (Hakuoh Joshi H.S.), Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) and Elizabeth Njeri (Josai Kokusai Univ.). Sunday features 27 heats of men's 5000 m, with the A-heat including sub-27 10000 m man Richard Kimunyan (Hitachi Butsuryu), steeplechase great Jonathan Ndiku (Hitachi Butsuryu), and 27:28.92 runner Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) on the next phase of his trip back from a long injury. Sunday's Setagaya 246 Half Marathon in suburban Tokyo is the main non-ekiden roa...

Japan's main early summer track series, the Hokuren Distance Challenge , is underway across Hokkaido. Following last month's special last chance edition for people to go for Oregon 2022 World Championships qualifying times, two regular meets have already happened this month. At the July 2 Shibetsu Meet , Benard Koech (Kyudenko) won the day's biggest race, the men's 5000 m A-heat, in 13:26.03 by a fraction of a second over Muthoni Muiru (JR Higashi Nihon). The biggest surprise was World Championships 3000 mSC squad member Kosei Yamaguchi (Aisan Kogyo) outkicking lone Worlds 5000 m entrant Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Kaijo) for top Japanese honors at 3rd overall in 13:33.45. Endo was 5th in 13:35.59, doing the race as a workout after winning the 3000 m in 7:52.50 where he beat another Worlds steepler, Ryoma Aoki (Honda) by 5 seconds. After missing the Tokyo Olympics 10000 m by a fraction of a second, Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) came close to a full comeback from a lon...

  20-year-old Kaede Hagitani  (Edion) and the just-turned-19 Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.) took the senior titles at the 2021 National Cross-Country Championships Saturday in Fukuoka. Hagitani ran away with it, outclassing a tight chase trio to win the Senior Women's 8 km by 26 seconds in 25:54. High schooler Miku Sakai  (Kitakyushu Municipal H.S.) was an impressive 2nd in 26:20.  Like Sakai opting for the senior race, Miura, the U20 national record holder for 3000 m steeplechase and half marathon, had a tougher race on his hands in the Senior Men's 10 km, just getting two-time 5000 m national champion Hiroki Matsueda  (Fujitsu) at the line for the win in 29:10 with the next four finishers, including past national champ Kazuki Tamura  (Sumitomo Denko), all within 10 seconds. 36-year-old Hakone Ekiden legend and 2:07:39 marathoner Masato Imai  (Toyota Kyushu) showed there's still life in his legs, a surprising 11th in 29:30. The junior races were...

Last year's runner-up Toyota  finally achieved its goal of stopping four-time defending New Year Ekiden champ Asahi Kasei  from adding to its dynasty, beating it by 37 seconds thanks in part to the absence of new 10000 m national record holder Akira Aizawa  from Asahi Kasei's starting roster. But Toyota again found itself in the runner-up position, both teams beaten in an almost flawless team run from East Japan region winner Fujitsu . Right from the start all three teams were out front, Hiroki Matsueda  (Fujitsu) taking the First Stage by a second over Keijiro Mogi  (Asahi Kasei) and another second over Hideyuki Tanaka  (Toyota). All three were run down on the mostly Kenyan second stage, Toyota falling to 4th after a surprisingly weak run from star Bedan Karoki , Fujitsu to 6th, and Asahi Kasei to 13th. Richard Kimunyan (Hitachi Butsuryu) and Stanley Waithaka  (Yakult) ran brilliantly to take over the top two spots, but the real star of the stage wa...

The JAAF has announced the entry lists for the long distance events for this year's rescheduled National Track and Field Championships , to be held Dec. 4 at Osaka's Yanmar Stadium Nagai. The program features men's and women's 5000 m, 10000 m and 3000 m steeplechase, with two heats of men's 10000 m due to the large number of entries. The defending national champs in five events, Hiroki Matsueda (Fujitsu, 5000 m), Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko, 10000 m), Ryohei Sakaguchi (SGH Group, 3000 mSC), Rina Nabeshima (Japan Post, 10000 m), and Reimi Yoshimura (Daito Bunka Univ., 3000mSC), are all entered. After initially announcing her entry, women's 5000 m national champion  Tomoka Kimura  (Shiseido) is an early scratch following disastrous runs at both major fall ekidens. Due to the one-day schedule doubling would be very unlikely, but that hasn't stopped men's 5000 m and marathon national record holder  Suguru Osako  (Nike) from entering both the 5000 m an...

One of the few events to survive the wave of race cancelations currently sweeping Japan as the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads, the National Cross-Country Championships took place Feb. 22 in Fukuoka. The senior men's 10 km was almost a replay of last year's race, with Hakone Ekiden uphill Fifth Stage star Yuhei Urano (Koku Gakuin Univ.) replacing Yuta Bando (Hosei Univ.) in the leading role of outrunning brothers Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) for the national title. Despite windy conditions times were quicker than in recent years, with Urano winning in 29:18 by 6 seconds over Kazuki Tamura and Yusuke Tamura another 10 seconds back. In the senior women's 8 km, last year's 5th-place and 2018 national 3000 m steeplechase champion Yukari Ishizawa (Edion) came back from a mid-race dropoff to outrun a group of women more than a decade younger for the win in 26:57, beating 20-year-old Yuna Wada (Meijo Univ.) by 1 second and 19-yea...

video highlights by NHK The team representing Nagano prefecture overcame a slow start to return to the top of the National Men's Ekiden in the event's 25th anniversary edition. Falling as low as 15th out of the 47 prefectural teams in the race after the first three stages, Nagano's fourth and fifth runners Akihito Kimura and Atsushi Utsuno fought their way up to the top three, setting up junior high schooler Hiroto Yoshioka to take over the lead with an 8:22 course record for the 3.0 km Sixth Stage. 8 seconds up on rival Hyogo with 13.0 km to go, Nagano anchor Yuhi Nakaya widened the margin of victory to 17 seconds by race's end with a 37:18 clocking. Beaten only by Fukushima 's Akira Aizawa on time, Nakaya brought Nagano home in a new record of 2:17:11 for the seven-stage, 48.0 km course. Although only two individual stages saw new course records, the top six teams all broke the old record of 2:18:43, Hyogo taking 2nd in 2:17:28 and Saitama 3rd in 2:...

The 2019 Hokuren Distance Challenge series wrapped up Monday in Abashiri with two main races, the women's 5000 m and men's 10000 m A-heats. Conditions for most of the day were too windy to produce the kinds of times people had hoped for, but just as the women's 5000 m got underway after sunset the wind died down enough for the race to go out on track for the Doha World Championships standard of 15:22.00. Four of the top five women from last month's National Championships 5000 m were in the field, of whom only national champion Tomoka Kimura (Shiseido) had already cleared the Doha standard inside the window. 2nd and 3rd-placers Rina Nabeshima (Japan Post) and Ririka Hironaka (Japan Post) both needed to clear it to join Kimura on the team, but while Hironaka faded off pace in the second half it took a long push from 1000 m for Nabeshima to get there. Which she did, just, winning in 15:21.40. Also the 10000 m national champion , Nabeshima was the fifth Japanese ...

Four hours after a collective sigh of relief 17,000-strong as Yuki Koike 's successful handoff to Yoshihide Kiryu brought the Golden Grand Prix Osaka meet to a close with a world-leading 38.00 win for the Japanese men's 4x100 m relay team, the acton continued at Osaka's Nagai Stadium with the women's and men's 10000 m National Championships . Held six weeks out from the rest of the National Championships this year to try to maximize performances and world rankings points in both the 5 and 10, the 10000 m Nationals started at 7:30 p.m. with the women's race. Championships record holder Hitomi Niiya (Nike Tokyo TC) started unusually slowly, sitting mid-to-rear pack as 2016 national champion Ayuko Suzuki (Japan Post) and-two defending national champ Mizuki Matsuda (Daihatsu) led the way, but after a 3:15 for the third 1000 m she lost patience and went to the front. From there it was a familiar race, Niiya holding the pace relentlessly as the competitio...

Stanford University's Payton Jordan Invitational is usually a big draw for Japanese runners, the site of the current women's 10000 m and former men's 10000 m national records. But with the JAAF moving the National Championships 10000 m from June to mid-May and the Golden Games in Nobeoka meet coming next weekend only a handful made the trip to California this time around. On the women's side, Rina Nabeshima (Japan Post), the fastest Japanese woman over 5000 m last year, ran 15:26.30 for 8th in the 5000 to miss the 2019 Doha World Championships entry standard by just over 4 seconds. Returning from a stellar half marathon debut in February her teammate Ayuko Suzuki ran 31:33.62 for 4th in the 10000 m, with Mai Shoji (Denso) 16th in 32:29.63. Suzuki was well under the Doha standard but almost 9 seconds over the 2020 Tokyo Olympics standard. Having qualified for the Sept. 15 MGC Race Olympic marathon trials it's unlikely she would run the 10000 m in Doha, bu...

After giving World XC a miss, Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) got his outdoor season off to a good start with a 13:33.70 PB for 5th at California's Mt. SAC Relays . His teammate Yuki Nakamura ran only 14:34.97, while the U.S.-based Takeshi Okada (UC Berkeley) ran 9:02.75 for 12th in the 3000 mSC. Toyota Jidoshokki teammates Momoka Kawaguchi and Nao Yamamoto ran the women's 5000 m, Kawaguchi the faster of the two at 15:54.82. Back home, Bernard Kibet (Kyudenko) ran an early season world-leading time of 27:36.24 to win the Hyogo Relay Carnival Grand Prix men's 10000 m, beating the 27:43.34 by Macharia Ndirangu (Aichi Seiko) a day earlier in Hyogo's Asics Challenge men's 10000 m, at the time also a world-leader. Kibet's teammate Shohei Otsuka was the fastest Japanese man of the weekend at 28:25.42 in the Asics Challenge race. Women's Grand Prix 10000 m winner Rosemary Monica Wanjiru (Starts) came up short of a world-leading time but was just a fe...

Japan held its 2019 National Cross Country Championships Saturday in Fukuoka, its primary selection race for next month's Aarhus World Cross-Country Championships . In the senior men's race, heavy favorite Kazuya Shiojiri (Juntendo Univ.) broke away from the field early, only to be run down midway by the 190-cm Yuta Bando (Hosei Univ.), who quickly broke Shiojiri and went ahead in the lead. With just a lap to go he was caught by brothers Kazuki Tamura (Sumitomo Denko) and Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima). With Kazuki Tamura constantly turning to call encouragement to his younger brother over his shoulder Bando had just enough downtime to attack in the last kilometer and get away for the win in 29:36. Kazuki Tamura was 2nd in 29:40 with Yusuke 3rd in 29:41. Waseda University first-year Yuhi Nakaya was 4th, with Yohei Komatsu and Shota Onizuka , two of the star members of 2019 Hakone Ekiden winner Tokai University , rounding out the top six and probable Aarhus senior me...