japan running news

5th last year, Edion led almost start to finish to win its first-ever national title at the Queens Ekiden corporate women's national championship race Sunday in Sendai. Its lead-off runner Kana Mizumoto opened up a 16-second lead that it held until the 4th leg, when the talented Caroline Kariba from 2024 winner Japan Post ran down Edion's Saya Nakajima . It's hard to fault Nakajima, who was still the fastest Japanese woman on that leg, and in any case Edion's 5th runner Ai Hosoda , 6th at August's Sydney Marathon, caught Japan Post's Kotoka Ota late in the 10.0 km leg to put Edion out front again by 7 seconds. Both Edion anchor Miho Hiraoka and Japan Post's Mao Kogure ran identical times for the 6.795 km 6th leg, 21:24, Hiraoka bringing Edion in to its first-ever win in 2:13:50. It had to have been frustrating for Kogure, who just couldn't close the gap and had to accept 2nd in 2:13:57. 2023 winner Sekisui Kagaku was almost a minute back in 3rd...

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...

31 corporate women's teams were in Fukuoka this weekend to go for the 16 remaining spots at November's Queens Ekiden, the corporate women's national championship race. 19-year-old China Nakagawa was a revelation on the opening leg as she took down the leadoff runners from the bigger teams to put Hitachi out front, but on the next stage steepler Manami Nishiyama put Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo out front with a stage-winning 10:57 for 3.6 km. A brilliant run from Nanaka Izawa (Starts) on the first of the race's two long stages interrupted Mitsui Sumitomo's lead, but when Mitsui Sumitomo's Tabitha Njeri outkicked Starts' Esther Wambui it was all Mitsui the rest of the way. Stage-winning runs from last two runners Wakana Kabasawa and Anna Matsuda were enough to give Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo the win in 2:15:53, 48 seconds under the old course record set by Shiseido in 2021 when Kabasawa was a member of that team. Starts ended up a distant 2nd in 2:18:04, with Ten...

Sunday's Princess Ekiden is the qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden corporate women's national championship race. In contrast to corporate men's teams, who are divided into regions for their qualifying races which they have to run every year because the New Year Ekiden national championships doesn't currently have a seeded podium, the women's system gives the top 8 teams at the Queens Ekiden guaranteed places at the next year's race and sends the rest back to a single qualifying race, the Princess Ekiden. This frees up the top tier of women's teams, currently Japan Post , Sekisui Kagaku , Shimamura , Panasonic , Edion , Iwatani Sangyo , Daiichi Seimei and Shiseido , to do things like this weekend's Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon or overseas races. 31 other teams will race at the Princess Ekiden, 42.195 km in 6 stages, to try to take one of the 16 remaining spots in the Queens Ekiden field. Teams at Princess are listed in the order they finish...

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...

Kagoshima's Higo Ginko women's corporate team ran Sunday's Princess Ekiden in a successful shot at making November's Queens Ekiden national championship. On its roster was a runner who looks forward to taking her daughter to the big show. Handling First Stage duties for the Higo Ginko team, Shiori Nagumo 's driving force was her 2-year-old daughter Itoha Nagumo . Shiori, 29, brings Itoha with her on team training camps and to races. When Shiori trains, Itoha is there to give her water. "It's a good thing, you know," said Higo Ginko head coach Shigeharu Watanabe , 55. "Even after becoming a mother, she's still able to focus on being an athlete." Shiori was once a key member of the top-tier Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo team, but she retired to give birth. Afterward she still felt motivated to return to running, and when her former Mitsui Sumitomo coach Watanabe got in touch she agreed to join Higo Ginko in July last year. "It's not easy...

Sunday is the Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden, the season-ending national championship race for corporate women's teams. The top 8 placers at last year's Queens Ekiden, Sekisui Kagaku , Japan Post , Panasonic , Shiseido , Daihatsu , Daiichi Seimei , Tenmaya and Iwatani Sangyo , auto-qualified for 2024, leaving the rest of the league's teams to line up in Fukuoka at the Princess Ekiden in hopes of joining them. 30 teams will compete for 16 places at the Queens Ekiden, each with a team of 6 running a total of 42.195 km. TBS is broadcasting the race live starting at 11:50, with streaming on Youtube. 16th at Queens last year, Kyudenko has scratched from Sunday's race due to athlete injuries preventing them from having enough people ready to run. 22nd at Queens, Yamada Holdings is also out because it couldn't field 6 runners, one reason being the transfer of one of its star runners, Sakiho Tsutsui , to Universal Entertai...

The Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden national corporate women's championships, happens Sunday in rural Fukuoka. 31 teams of 6 women will be racing 42.195 km in pursuit of 16 places at Queens alongside the top tier of podium placers from last year's national championships. TBS will be streaming the race live on Youtube starting at 12:10 p.m., and if you've got a VPN you should be all set. Live results will be posted here . There's a general sense that Japanese women aren't where they used to be, but counter to that trend are a lot of new women's ekiden teams trying to get off the ground. Along with some of the long-established powers like past national champions Universal Entertainment , Tenmaya and Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo , there are relatively young teams like Nitori , Senko and Tokyo Metro trying to qualify for the first time, and newcomers like Bears Camellia making their debuts. Next year expect to see at leas...

The qualifying race for the Nov. 24 National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships took place Oct. 20 in the town of Munakata, Fukuoka. Covering 42.195 km in six stages, in its fifth running the Princess Ekiden hosted 28 teams competing for the 14 qualifying spots on offer. Sekisui Kagaku took 1st among them in 2:19:36, holding off runner-up Kyudenko by 16 seconds with 3rd-placer Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo  another 4 seconds behind. 7th-place Hitachi qualified for Nationals for the first time in 3 years, and 14th-place Uniqlo made it in for the first time in 4 years, while Kagoshima Ginko was the unlucky 15th-place team, just 33 seconds short of qualifying. Two new stage records were set, Kaede Hagitani (Edion) running a new record of 22:28 for the 7.0 km First Stage and marathoner Miyuki Uehara (Daiichi Seimei) running 34:42 for the 10.4 km Fourth Stage a month after a DNF at the MGC Race 2020 Olympic marathon trials. Princess Ekiden National Corporate Women's Ekid...

In one of the wildest elite-level ekidens in memory, half marathon national record holder Kayoko Fukushi ran her best race in almost 3 years to anchor the Wacoal team to the win at the Princess Ekiden , the qualifying race for next month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships. The field of 27 teams raced 6 stages totaling 42.195 km for one of 14 spots at Nationals alongside last year's top 8. Things were complicated by the disqualification of 2017 national champion Universal Entertainment , which found itself back at the Princess Ekiden to requalify. Sayaka Sato got things off to a good start for Sekisui Kagaku , winning the 7.0 km First Stage in 22:36 just off the CR. 4 seconds back was Shiori Yano , whose Canon AC Kyushu team missed Nationals by a minute last year. and another 5 seconds behind was Miku Daido of the debuting Iwatani Sangyo team. Coached by marathon national record holder Mizuki Noguchi 's former coach Hisakazu Hirose , Iwatani ...

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye2898668.htm translated and edited by Brett Larner The Princess Ekiden , gateway to the throne of Japan's ekiden queens.  28 teams competed Oct. 23 for the 14 remaining spots at next month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships . The fierce battle to sit atop the throne started right out of the gate.  Its big movement came on the 3.8 km Fourth Stage.   Shuru Bulo , making her debut for toilet and washlet maker Toto , made up a 46-second deficit to put Toto into the lead by 4 seconds.  From there on out Toto sailed on smoothly and without straining to score its first Princess Ekiden title by 45 seconds over rival Noritz .  The win meant a fourth-straight appearance at Nationals for the Toto team.  Can they become the queens of tomorrow? More drama was to found further back in the field in the race for the 14th and final ticket to Nationals.  In 14th on the second-to-last stage, the Juhachi Gink...

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/athletics/news/f-sp-tp0-20141214-1409007.html translated and edited by Brett Larner 26 teams ran the 34th edition of the 6-stage, 42.195 km National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships in cold and windy conditions Dec. 14 in Sendai, Miyagi.  The Denso team dominated, breaking its own course record in 2:16:12 to score its second-straight win, the first time that a team has defending its national title since Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo completed a hat trick in 2005. Denso started off slow, 29 seconds down from the lead in 12th after the First Stage.  Second Stage runner Naoko Koizumi celebrated her 22nd birthday by running the second-best time on the stage to move Denso up to 3rd.  Up against each team's best Japanese athlete on the Third Stage, Yuka Takashima , 26, ran down leaders Toyota Jidoshokki and Yamada Denki in stage record time to put Denso into the lead.  Takashima ran 34:40 for the 10.9 km stage to beat multiple n...

http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=spo_30&k=2011042100608 translated by Brett Larner Team Uniqlo announced this week that longtime Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo head coach Hideo Suzuki , 59, would be taking over as head coach at Uniqlo effective May 1. Suzuki led Chiba's Funabashi H.S. girls' ekiden team to two national championships before becoming head coach at Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo, which he led until 2009. Under his leadership Mitsui became the best team in the country, winning countless National Corporate Women's Ekiden titles. Individual team members also became among Japan's best, including two-time Olympian and double World Championships marathon medalist Reiko Tosa and 10000 m national record holder and former marathon national record holder Yoko Shibui . Speaking of his goals for the Uniqlo team, Suzuki commented, "I want to help the team members move even one step closer toward becoming athletes competitve at the global level. I want to help them build on ...

http://mainichi.jp/enta/sports/news/20101228k0000m050086000c.html translated by Brett Larner After retiring following the 2009 Tokyo Marathon to become a mother, two-time World Championships marathon medalist Reiko Tosa , 34, announced on Dec. 27 that she will make a comeback to competitive running. Tosa will spend the new year training with Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo on Miyako island and will run in February's Tokyo Marathon. Tosa gave birth to her first baby, a daughter, in April and has remained a part of Mitsui Sumitomo in an advisorial role since her retirement. On her blog Tosa had previously written, "I'm planning to run the January 30 Osaka Half Marathon followed by a marathon in late February. I don't know how far I'll be able to go but I'm excited to see what I can do." Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo head coach Shigeharu Watanabe commented, "She isn't back to full, serious marathon training yet but we're confident that by the time she r...

by Brett Larner Note: Start lists will be added when available. The 30th anniversary National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden Championships take place this Sunday, Dec. 19. It's fitting that the anniversary edition, the last to be held on the historic Gifu course before the race's move north to Sendai next year, is slated to mark the return of the great Mizuki Noguchi (Team Sysmex) to the national stage. Noguchi, the marathon national record holder and 2004 Athens Olympics marathon gold medalist, has been out of competition since an injury in the summer of 2008 prevented her from defending her title in Beijing. Finally racing again earlier this fall in the regional qualifier ekidens, she helped Sysmex to qualify for Nationals for the first time. Start lists have not yet been confirmed but Noguchi's presence on the entry list has been used heavily to promote Sunday's race across the country. 10000 m national record holder and former marathon national record holder Yoko ...

by Brett Larner Shibui rides again. Click picture for sanspo.com's National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden photo gallery. Despite not taking a single stage best title, six-time national champion Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo returned to the top of the six-stage marathon distance 2009 National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden Championships on Dec. 13 in Gifu with another win to make it seven. The team's chances depended largely on whether its star Yoko Shibui had recovered from the stress fracture that kept her out of the 2009 World Championships marathon. She had. Although she was far from her normal condition, Shibui's stage-4th 32:13 for the 10 km Third Stage was good enough to keep the team in position after a strong stage-2nd performance by First Stage runner Ikuyo Yamashita . Fresh from last month's Yokohama International Women's Marathon, Miki Ohira ran the 2nd-best time on the Fifth Stage to take the lead and anchor Chisato Osaki likewise was 2nd on her stage...

http://www.daily.co.jp/newsflash/2008/05/01/0000996944.shtml translated by Brett Larner Beijing Olympics women`s marathon team member Reiko Tosa (Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) left Narita Airport on May 1 for a high-altitude training camp in Boulder, Colorado. "My preparations start with this camp," Tosa told reporters. "I`m going to be training very hard." She will return to Japan on June 4. Tosa last trained in Boulder while preparing for the 2001 Edmonton World Championships where she won a silver in the marathon. Tosa first visited Boulder in 1999 as a training partner for some of her teammates, and rapidly improved while training there. Last year she did most of her training in Kunming, China, but, as she explained, "I`ve always had a good image of Boulder because of how much faster I`ve gotten there in the past." 3 days before leaving Tosa had the dental braces she has worn since the spring of `05 removed. Tosa got the braces on the recommendation of h...

http://www.iaaf.org/news/kind=2/newsid=42684.html#team+mitsui+sumitomo+again+gifu Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo won despite missing Osaka World Championships women`s marathon bronze medalist Reiko Tosa who has been suffering from assorted injuries since Osaka . This bodes ill for her recovery leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Similarly, Team Kyocera was missing its star runner Yumiko Hara who performed poorly in Osaka due to a leg injury. Hara is scheduled to run the Osaka International Women`s Marathon next month to attempt to qualify for the Beijing Olympics, but her absence here raises questions about her current fitness. It is also worth noting that despite most of the teams` best runners being Kenyan, foreign runners were limited to the 10 km third stage rather than being allowed to run the longest stage, the 11.6 km fifth stage. This type of restriction is also true in the men`s All Japan Jitsugyodan Ekiden. Complete results from the race website: http://www.tbs.co.jp/ekiden...

http://www.sanspo.com/sports/top/sp200711/sp2007111607.html Beijing Olympic marathon team member Reiko Tosa (31, Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo) left Japan on November 15 to train at altitude in Kunming, China for December`s All-Japan Jitsugyodan Women`s Ekiden. Since winning the bronze medal in the Osaka World Championships Tosa has been suffering from fatigue and low blood pressure, perhaps lingering effects of the hot and humid conditions at the Championships. Interviewed at Narita Airport, Tosa said, "My body has been so tired lately and I just can`t run well. I want to run as a member of the ekiden team but I need to get through this bad state first." Tosa`s teammate Yoko Shibui will be running the Tokyo International Women`s Marathon on November 18 in an attempt to join her on the Olympic team. Tosa described Shibui as "...in incredibly good shape, and I think she`s also in the right state of mind to win."

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/p-sp-tp0-20071104-278688.html translated by Brett Larner Yoko Shibui displayed peak form before her attempt to make the Beijing Olympic team at the Tokyo International Women`s Marathon. On the 10 km 3rd stage of the East Japan Jitsugyodan Women`s Ekiden Shibui broke her personal stage best by 3 seconds, running 31:06 to take the top spot away from rivals Dai-Ichi Seimei and lead Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo to its 8th straight East Japan victory. Shibui showed both the strength and speed she will need to beat Athens Olympic gold medallist, and current Japanese national record holder Mizuki Noguchi in Tokyo to make the Olympic team. She started the stage in 2nd place, passed Dai-Ichi Seimei`s Ozaki near the 5 km point, and finished the stage 0:44 ahead of Ozaki. Shibui`s previous best mark on the 3rd stage was set in `00; her new best is just 0:05 short of the stage record of 31:01 (Phyllis, Hokuren). After her run Shibui said "I didn`t do any ekiden tra...