japan running news

The first two regional qualifying races for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships happened Monday in the two most competitive regions, the Tokyo-area East Japan region and Fukuoka-centered Kyushu region. The New Year Ekiden is pretty much the only major ekiden that doesn't have a seeded podium that guarantees top-placing teams a place at the follow year's race, meaning even the best of the best have to go through the formalities of a regional qualifier and all the disruption it brings to whatever fall racing schedule Japan's top corporate men might be trying to put together. 12 places were available in the East Japan race and 9 in Kyushu, and in honor of the New Year Ekiden's 70th anniversary one more slot was available in both regions to the next team to finish if they made it to the line within 10 minutes of the last regular qualifier. Logisteed took the top spot in East Japan thanks in a big way to a brilliant run on the race's lo...

Conditions were too hot at this season's last Hokuren Distance Challenge meet Saturday in Abashiri for many really good performances, but there were a few, mostly by Japan-based Kenyans. In the men's 10000 m A-heat collegiate record holder Richard Etir (Tokyo Kokusai Univ,) soloed a 27:37.85 for the win by almost 23 seconds, the only man to get under 28 minutes. Caroline Kariba (Japan Post) did the same in the women's 10000 m with a 31:02.70 PB for the win. Dolphine Omare (Uniqlo) and Rika Kaseda (Daihatsu) both made it under 32, Omare running 31:29.35 and Kaseda 31:42.92. 2025 national 5000 m champion Ryuto Igawa (Asahi Kasei) had what was probably the best Japanese performance of the meet, running a PB 13:23.13 for the win over Antipas Kibet (Komori Corp.). Fresh off a 3:36.58 PB at the HDC Kitami meet on Wednesday, Nanami Arai (Honda) was 3rd with another PB in 13:28.42. Top-tier Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) was one of the day's many DNFs. Stephen Muthini (S...

The National Track and Field Championships are this weekend at Tokyo's National Stadium on the same track where the Tokyo World Championships will happen in September. Streaming of the first day on Friday is above, with a separate channel for field events here . Streaming will cut off at 18:30, when it switches over to a live broadcast on NHK BS, and then on NHK's main channel at 19:30. Other streaming links: Saturday Track ・ Saturday Field ・ Sunday Track ・ Sunday Field Meet schedule here . Entry list highlights, with athletes' best marks in the Nationals qualifying window: Men's 100 m Abdul Hakim Sani Brown (Toray) - 9.96 Hiroki Yanagita (Toyo Univ.) - 10.02 Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko) - 10.09 Ryuichiro Sakai (Osaka Gas) - 10.10 Naoki Nishioka (Tsukuba Univ.) - 10.11 Ryota Suzuki (Suzuki) - 10.12 Naoki Inoue (Waseda Univ.) - 10.12 Ryo Wada (Miki House) - 10.13 Yoshihide Kiryu (Nihon Seimei) - 10.15 Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) - 10.26 Men's 200 m Towa Uzawa (JAL) - 2...

  Another busy weekend in Japan and for Japanese athletes racing abroad. On the roads, the biggest thing at home was ASICS' Tokyo:Speed:Race  Wavelight-paced promo event for its new road shoe lineup. After setting a 59:27 NR at the Marugame Half in February, Tomoki Ota (Toyota) added another low-hanging NR fruit to his resume with a 13:30 for 10th in the 5 km. Harbert Kibet (Uganda) took the win in 13:00. Jemal Mekonen (Ethiopia) won the men's 10 km in 27:10, where Kyosuke Hanao (Toyota Kyushu) was the top Japanese man in 28:23, technically also a new NR, but come on. Triathlete Hayden Wilde (New Zealand) was 7th in an excellent 27:39, only to crash on his bike in Tokyo the next day and suffering multiple broken bones and a punctured lung. Marathon NR holder Honami Maeda (Tenmaya) had a mini comeback in the women's 5 km, finishing 13th in 15:48 as the top Japanese finisher. Caroline Nyaga (Kenya) won in a stellar 14:19, with the top 5 all breaking 15 minutes. Joy Chep...

A new, nominally one-off event held as part of Osaka's hosting of Expo 2025, Sunday's ACN Expo Ekiden pit top top corporate and collegiate teams against each other on a 7-stage, 54.5 km course. The new race lost a bit of steam when New Year Ekiden runner-up Honda declined to participate, when winner Asahi Kasei pulled out days before the race, and when the top two teams at the Hakone Ekiden, Aoyama Gakuin University and Komazawa University , didn't field A-list lineups. In their absence it was pretty much a blowout for New Year Ekiden 3rd-placer Toyota , who led start-to-finsh off a great leading run by Yamato Yoshii and stage best titles on 4 of the 7 individual legs to win in 2:32:48. Fujitsu came on strong over the 2nd half with wins by 4th and 5th runners Daniel Kosen and Kazuya Shiojiri and strong runs on the final stages by Hiroki Matsueda and Kengo Suzuki to move into 2nd, finishing 1:14 behind Toyota in 2:34:02. Hakonen 3rd-placer Koku Gakuin University b...

Japan's National Cross Country Championships happened Saturday in Fukuoka, maybe the earliest selection race in the world for next January's World XC Championships in Florida. The senior men's 10 km lived up to the hype with a 4-way race between 3000 m SC NR holder Ryuji Miura , 10000 m NR holder Kazuya Shiojiri , sub-28 man Ryuto Igawa and Hakone Ekiden downhill specialist Aoi Ito . It came down to a sprint finish between Miura and Igawa, with Miura getting the win 28:24 to 28:25 and Shiojiri a few steps back in 28:29. Considering that the National Corporate Road 10 km Championships two weeks ago were won with a time over 29 minutes, times were fast overall with the top 6 under 29 minutes. The senior women's 8 km was a pack race most of the way, with one of the favorites Momoka Kawaguchi pulling away for the win in 26:25. 6th-place Wakana Itsuki was only 10 seconds behind 2nd-placer Sora Shinozakura , who clocked 26:31, showing what a close race it was. Anna Suzuki...

The 2025 National Cross Country Championships happen Saturday in Fukuoka. Streaming starts at 11:20 a.m. local time, with the race schedule looking like this: 11:50  - H.S, girls' 4 km 12:10  - H.S. boys: 4 km 12:30  - Senior women's 2 km 12:40  - Senior men's 2 km 12:50  - U20 women's 6 km 13:15  - U20 men's 8 km 13:50  - Senior women's 8 km 14:25  - Senior men's 10 km 15:05  - J.H.S. girls' 2 km 15:20  - J.H.S. boys' 2 km Start lists are here . Based on those, the senior men's 10 km looks like it has the best matchup, with the field including 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura (Subaru), 10000 m NR holder Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu), 5000 m H.S. record holder Hiroto Yoshioka (Juntendo Univ.), Olympic triathlete Kenji Nener (Tochigi T&F Assoc.), Hakone downhill star  Aoi Ito (Komazawa Univ.), sub-28 10000 m runners Yusuke Tamura (Kurosaki Harima) and Ryuto Igawa (Asahi Kasei), and many more. There's not a lot of comparable dep...

It's hard to beat the numbers, and with a whole team of current students at 2024 National High School Ekiden winner Saku Chosei H.S. , Saku Chosei alumni, and junior high schoolers bound to go there, 3-time National Men's Ekiden defending champ Nagano had enough of them to score a record 4th-straight win Sunday in Hiroshima. Saku Chosei's Yamato Hamaguchi got it off with a 19:33 win on the 7.0 km opening leg just 2 seconds off the CR, and even though second and third runners Taisei Masuda and Hiroto Yoshioka underperformed enough for Nagano to fall to 7th, a new 23:32 CR by Saku Chosei's Tetsu Sasaki on the 8.5 km Fifth Stage put them back out in front and far enough away that nobody could catch them. Anchor Taishi Ito brought Nagano home for the win in 2:16:55, 5 seconds under the overall CR for the 48.0 km race that Nagano set last year. Chiba spent the first half of the race back in the middle of the field of 47 teams from each of Japan's prefectures, but...

Corporate women had their national championship ekiden last weekend, but for everyone else the biggest races of the year are still coming up in the next month, and a lot of them were at Nittai University this weekend for one of the last big tune-ups. The men's 10000 m fast heat had a massive 18 people break 28 minutes, and this just a week after the main 10000 m of the season in Hachioji . Up front there was a thrilling photo finish, with steeplechase specialist Philemon Kiplagat going right to the line with NR holder Kazuya Shiojiri who had scratched from Hachioji, both of them clocking 27:36.37 but Kiplagat getting the win. Shiojiri's corporate team Fujitsu had 7 men break 28 including marathon NR holder Kengo Suzuki , with Asahi Kasei turning out 3 and Subaru 2, raising the stakes for the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden. Speaking of steeplechase and Subaru, NR holder Ryuji Miura was nowhere near the NR attempt he'd floated pre-race but still had a decent run in the 5000 m...

  On Nov. 15 the East Japan Corporate Federation announced that 10000 m national champion and Paris Olympian  Jun Kasai  (Asahi Kasei) and Budapest World Championships team member  Ren Tazawa  (Toyota) have both withdrawn from the 10000 m at the Nov. 23 Hachioji Long Distance meet. This year's Hachioji Long Distance features a special heat set up to target the 27:00.00 qualifying standard for next year's Tokyo World Championships. Along with Kasai and Tazawa, national record holder Kazuya Shiojiri  (Fujitsu) and other top-level Japanese talent are scheduled to compete. After last January's New Year Ekiden , Tazawa sustained an injury that forced him to miss May's National Championships 10000 m and other races including the Paris Olympics. At the end of September he ran 13:36.99 for 5th at the Yogibo Athletics Challenge Cup meet, but, he said, "My balance felt off and the back of my left knee hurt." In Kasai's case, after winning the national title in M...

The East Japan Corporate Federation published featured athlete entry lists for next month's Hachioji Long Distance meet on its website on Oct. 10. The meet takes place Nov. 23 at Hachioji's Kamiyugi Field and will include 5000 m races this year along with its usual program of 10000 m races. In addition, a special heat of 10000 m is being set up to target the Japanese national record of 27:09.80 and the Tokyo World Championships qualifying standard, 27:00.00. Announced for that heat are NR holder Kazuya Shiojiri (27:09.80, Fujitsu), 2024 national champion and Paris Olympian Jun Kasai (27:17.46, Asahi Kasei), and 2022 and 2023 World Championships team member Ren Tazawa (27:22.31, Toyota). Tazawa commented, "There aren't that many races either in Japan or overseas that are set up for 26 minutes, so this is a really important chance to become the first Japanese athlete to run under 27 minutes." Others on featured athlete list include Mebuki Suzuki (27:26.67, Toyo...

Juntendo University is one of the true powers of the Hakone Ekiden, with 11 wins in 65 appearances and producing current 3000 mSC and 10000 m national record holders Ryuji Miura and Kazuya Shiojiri . But an investigation by the Weekly Shincho gossip rag has uncovered students' accusations of abuse and power harassment against a famed honorary head coach. The university administration has acknowledged that student athletes were put in danger and indicated that the coach in question would step away from any coaching duties. The accused man is Keisuke Sawaki , 80, former head coach of the Juntendo track and field team and currently serving as a specially-appointed professor and honorary head coach at the university. A Juntendo alumnus and two-time Olympian who competed in long distance track events at both the 1968 Mexico City and 1972 Munich Olympics, as head coach Sawaki led Juntendo to 9 of its 11 Hakone victories. Those successes led to him serving at one point as executive dir...

Entry lists are out for Japan's National Championships at the end of the month in Niigata. Top three there with the standard or inside their event quota is the primary way for people who haven't yet to score places on the Paris Olympics team, and it's notable that three people with the standard, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown in the men's 100 m, Ryuji Miura in the men's 3000 mSC, and Shunsuke Izumiya in the men's 400 mH, are giving Nationals a miss. One effect of their absence is that it improves the chances that other people are going to make the Paris quota on points, especially in the 100 m and steeple where Sani Brown and Miura are the only ones with the standard and likely to still be that way post-Nationals. Whether that's intentional only they can say, but it's interesting that one outcome of the World Athletics world rankings system is that in a way it encourages top talent to skip their National Championships to help out their teammates. But the mos...