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After winning the Morinomiyako Ekiden for the first time in October, Josai University pulled off the double in an anchor stage battle against Tohoku Fukushi University and Daito Bunka University with all three going for their first-ever Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national title. 2024 Morinomiyako and Mt. Fuji double champ Ritsumeikan University got off to a good start with a stage win from lead runner Yua Sato but plummeted to 9th when star 3rd-year Sayuki Ota was only 16th of 24 on the Second Stage. From there it was all Ritsumeikan could do to hang on to a place in the top 5, the same as its result in Morinomiyako this year. In its place, Josai went to the front off a CR of 20:36 for the 6.8 km Second Stage by 1st-year Kyo Honma to go with her opening leg CR at Morinomiyako. It stayed out front until the longest leg of the race, the 10.5 km Fifth Stage, where Sarah Wanjiru of perpetual runner-up DBU easily turned a 47-second deficit into a 47-second lead and Nazuki Sasaki ...

Yeah, this was a good one. Last year's CR-breaking Morinomiyako Ekiden winner and national university women's champion Ritsumeikan University had a lackluster run at the Kansai Region qualifying race at the end of September, finishing only 3rd. That turned out to be a sign of where it is this season and not a peaking issue. Ritsumeikan was in 2nd for the first 2 legs in the 6-stage 38.0 km race with good runs from leading duo Sayuki Ota and Yua Sato but only faded from there, ultimately finishing 5th almost 2 minutes off the win. Josai University , the 1998 and 2000 national champ, came in hot with its first 3 runners Kyo Honma , Koharu Kaneko and Yuna Onishi replicating their feat at the Kanto Region qualifying race of all breaking the CR on their stages. Ichigo Ishikawa , a replacement for Kanto lineup member Aoi Takahashi , ran big on the 4th leg to give Josai a 20-second lead over last year's 5th-placer Tohoku Fukushi University , 49 seconds on 2018-2024 national ...

The last big race of the year is Monday's Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden , the season-ending national championship race for university women. Between Mt. Fuji and October's Morinomiyako Ekiden , up to this season Meijo University was undefeated in 13-straight championship ekiden races, with 7-straight wins at Morinomiyako and 6 at Mt. Fuji. But nothing lasts forever, and at this year's Morinomiyako the last big dynasty school before Meijo, Ritsumeikan University , winner at Morinomiyako from 2011 to 2015 and at Mt. Fuji from 2013 to 2017, outran a flailing Meijo squad to take the win for the first time in 9 years. Its runners took stage wins on 3 of the 6 legs, Yumi Yamamoto breaking the Second Stage CR, Tomo Muramatsu the Third Stage CR, and anchor Makoto Tsuchiya outrunning Meijo captain Nanase Tanimoto for the win. Meijo's big names, especially Tanimoto and Nanaka Yonezawa , have been off their best most of this season, and it showed when they were only 4th at Mori...

A group of Japanese university runners competed in the Zevenheuvelenloop 15 km road race in the Netherlands on Nov. 17. Every year a group of students is selected to compete based on their results at the National University Half Marathon and National University Track and Field Championships 10000 m. Having won both the Izumo Ekiden and National University Ekiden this season, Koku Gakuin University was out in force in the men's race too. Rui Aoki was part of a 5-way sprint finish for 2nd behind Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo 's 40:42 world best, taking 4th in 43:23, the best-ever Japanese men's performance at the race. Aoki won this year's National University Half Marathon in 1:02:06. He was 3rd on the First Stage at October's Izumo Ekiden and 7th on the Second Stage at the National University Ekiden, playing a key role in KGU's wins at both. His teammate Hikaru Tsujihara was 10th in 43:55, having handled the Third Stage at both Izumo and Nationals. Hinata Shirakawa ...

Sunday's Morinomiyako Ekiden in Sendai is one of the two big national-level ekidens on the collegiate women's ekiden circuit. This is the era of Meijo University , who have won the last seven Morinomiyako titles and the last six at December's Mt. Fuji. Women's Ekiden , and just about the only real story here is whether anyone can stop them. Five out the six members of last year's winning team, Nanaka Yonezawa , Kaede Rikimaru , Asuka Ishimatsu , Saki Harada , and Nanase Tanimoto , are back, and the only one missing, 2nd-year Naru Yabutani , finished the lowest on the team on her stage at 4th last time. Tanimoto, the only 4th-year on the team, has had more downs than ups this season, but that was true last year too and Meijo came through. Perpetual 2nd-placer Daito Bunka University was only 52 seconds behind over the 38.0 km Morinomiyako course, and that was with one of its runners finishing only 12th on her stage. Its entire 2023 lineup is back, led by 2nd-year S...

Coming off a seventh-straight win at October's Morinomiyako Ekiden, five-time Mount Fuji Women's Ekiden national champion Meijo University led start to finish to win it again for the sixth year in a row Saturday in Shizuoka. Meijo's first four runners, Azumi Nagira , Nanaka Yonezawa , Miyu Yamada and Asuka Ishimatsu all won their stages to give Meijo what was pretty much an unbreakable lead. Undefeated in collegiate ekiden competition up to this point in her career, Meijo 3rd-year Nanase Tanimoto lost to Daito Bunka University 1st-year Sarah Wanjiru by 24 seconds on the 10.5 km Fifth Stage but still handed off to captain Yuka Masubuchi 1:04 ahead. Masubuchi ran a CR 19:27 for her 6.0 km to hand off to anchor Saki Harada on course record pace. On the tough anchor stage, 8.3 km climbing 175 m mostly in its second half, Harada proved the weak link on the team at only 5th-fastest in the field, but while that wasn't enough for Meijo to better its own CR Harada had no ...

The thing about dynasties is that sooner or later they're going to end. From 2003 to 2016 Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University won the Morinomiyako National University Women's Ekiden ten times and took 2nd the four times they didn't. But in 2017 Nagoya's Meijo University arrived on the scene and has won every year since then, its current streak of six national titles longer than Ritsumeikan's longest uninterrupted streak. Meijo holds the overall record of 2:02:57 for the 6-stage, 38.1 km course, slightly edited to 38.0 km this year, and its runners hold four of the six individual stage records. It keeps graduating top talent, most recently joint Third Stage CR record holders Narumi Kobayashi and Yuma Yamamoto , but head coach Katsuro Yoneda just keeps finding the top talent and helping it develop. But this season Meijo has been looking a little shaky. Out of last year's lineup, Fourth Stage CR breaker Nanase Tanimoto was 7th in last month's National Univ...

  The final day of the Yecheon U20 Asian Championships was held on June 7. Leading the day's action, Junpei Maseda (Waseda Univ.) won the men's 1500 m in 3:50.15. Maseda, who ran the First Stage at this year's Hakone Ekiden for Waseda, led aggressively from the start. Iraq's M. Al-Khazali made a late challenge, but Maseda held him off to take gold. In the women's 100 mH final, a day after taking silver in the heptathlon Miki Hayashi (Chukyo H.S.) pulled away in the middle phase of the race to win gold in 13.64 -0.4 m/s. Jennifer Saita (Josai H.S.) was the only athlete in the women's 200 m final to break 24 seconds, taking gold in 23.99 -0.1 m/s. Men's 3000 m gold medalist Sonata Nagashima (Asahi Kasei) pulled off the double in the 5000 m, winning again in 14:23.91. In other events, Sota Haraguchi (Juntendo Univ.) cleared a PB 2.18 m for silver in the men's high jump. Haruya Suzaki (Keio Univ.) was 5th at 2.06 m. In the women's 1500 m, 5000 m ...

The U20 Asian Championships started June 4 in Yecheon, South Korea with competition in eight events. In the men's 3000 m, Sonata Nagashima ran 8:19.49 to win the gold medal. With only five athletes in the race, Nagashima took the lead in the first 200 m with a 2:40 first 1000 m. Nobody else could follow that kind of pace, and with a 5:24 split at 2000 m his lead only grew as he coasted in to his first international title. Nagashima joined the Asahi Kasei corporate team in April after graduating from Nishiwaki Kogyo H.S. Active in track and field since junior high school, he was a podium placer at the National High School Ekiden and won the opening stages at both last December's National High School Ekiden and January's National Men's Ekiden. In the women's 5000 m, Nanaka Yonezawa of national champion Meijo University took the gold medal in 16:37.37, with Akari Matsumoto of the Sekisui Kagaku corporate team winning silver in 16:42.22. Nozomi Sakurai (Semi H....

The Kyoto new year's tradition of female athletes handing off the tasuki returns with the National Women's Ekiden . The entry list has been released, and some of the country's top athletes with international experience will run their first races of the new year there. The National Women's Ekiden starts and finishes at Kyoto's Takebishi Stadium on Sunday, Jan. 15 covering a marathon-distance course divided into nine legs, with teams from each prefecture made up of athletes from junior high school students to the corporate leagues. 2022 Oregon World Championships marathon 9th-placer Mizuki Matsuda will run for the Osaka team, with Nozomi Tanaka running for Hyogo after having participated in three track events in Oregon. Wrapping up her first year at national champion Meijo University , N anaka Yonezawa will run for her high school-era home of Miyagi. Having played an important role in Nagano Higashi H.S. 's first-ever National High School Ekiden win in Kyoto ...

There was never any doubt that Meijo University was going to win a fifth-straight national title at today's Mount Fuji Women's Ekiden , but what they really showed was that they have the core of a team that is going to extend its dynasty at least another 3 or 4 years. 1st-year trio Azumi Nagira , Hikaru Kitagawa and Nanaka Yonezawa built up a 43-second lead for Meijo over the first three legs, Yonezawa taking 4 seconds off the CR for hers. 3rd-year Yuka Masubuchi added another 19 seconds to that, setting up 4th-year power duo Yuma Yamamoto and Narumi Kobayashi to deliver it to 2nd-year anchor Nanase Tanimoto to bring Meijo home up the ~170m climb of the final stage. Yamamoto made sure nobody was going to come from behind late in the race, taking Meijo's lead from 1:02 to 2:28 over the 10.5 km fifth leg. Kobayashi has had trouble performing up to her past level this year, but even though she lost 21 seconds she still managed to run the 3rd-fastest time on her stage. ...

The Mount Fuji Women's Ekiden , the year-ending national championship for university women, happens this Friday at 10:00 a.m. Japan time, kicking off four days of the year's best racing over the course of five. Fuji TV has the live broadcast starting at 9:50 a.m., TVer has the streaming, and @JRNLive will have the English coverage. When it comes to the collegiate men's ekiden circuit it's a given that Tokyo-area schools are going to win and, in most cases, fill the podium, but the college women's ekidens are more genuinely national, and in that way have a type of excitement the men's races lack. The Mt. Fuji race has 7 hilly stages totaling 43.4 km, with a mostly downhill first two stages, a rolling middle four, and an anchor stage that climbs almost 170 m. And Meijo University is going to win. Meijo is the four-time defending champ and is fresh off a sixth-straight win at October's Morinomiyako Ekiden where it won 5 of the 6 stages, 3 in CR time. The ...

There was never really any doubt that five-time defending champion Meijo University was going to become the first team in National University Women's Ekiden history to win a sixth-straight title. Star 1st-year Nanaka Yonezawa took the lead in the first 200 m and from there Meijo never looked back. Its first four runners Yonezawa, Asuka Ishimatsu , Yuma Yamamoto and Nanase Tanimoto all won their stages, Yamamoto tying the 21:37 CR held by teammate Narumi Kobayashi on the 6.9 km Third Stage and Tanimoto turning in the most impressive run of the day with a 15:14 CR on the 4.8 km Fourth Stage, 23 seconds under the CR she set last year and 50 seconds faster than the next-best runner on the stage. Captain Kobayashi was the only weak link in the lineup, 30:48 for 6th on the 9.2 km Fifth Stage, but anchor Yuka Masubuchi still had a 1:55 lead to work with on the 6.7 km Sixth Stage. Like Tanimoto, Masubuchi broke her own CR with a 22:04 that put Meijo's final lead up to 2:31. Wit...

Sunday is the 40th edition of Sendai's Morinomiyako Ekiden , the National University Women's Ekiden Championships . NTV will be broadcasting the race live starting at noon local time, with coverage also on @JRNLive . 26 teams are racing for the national title, the complete course covering 38.1 km in 6 legs. Last year Meijo University led start-to-finish en route to a fifth-straight win, taking 5 of the 6 individual stage titles with 3 of them in course record time. 2 of the stage winners have graduated, but in their place Meijo has a very strong class of first-years led by Nanaka Yonezawa , 8:59.57 for 3000 m and 15:31.33 for 5000 m. 4 others are under 9:15 for 3000 m or under 15:50 for 5000 m, making solid support for the 4 returning members from last year. A lot depends on 4th-year Narumi Kobayashi , who ran a 10000 m  collegiate record 31:22.34 last year but hasn't run well most of her senior year so far. 4th-year Yuma Yamamoto on the other hand is fresh off a 15:16....

The National University Individual Track and Field Championships wrapped its third day with three new meet records. First up, Atsushi Shobu (Waseda Univ.) led the top 5 under the old record in the men's 3000 m steeplechase , winning in 8:40.57. The next 4, Soma Hattori (Juntendo Univ.), Shohei Yamaguchi (Teikyo Univ.), Ryotaro Onuma (Josai Univ.) and Kento Uchida (Rikkyo Univ.) were all under 8:50, and with all 5 coming from different universities it showed the impact Olympian collegian Ryuji Miura of Juntendo University is having on making the steeple a focus event in Japan. Women's steeple collegiate record holder Reimi Yoshimura (Daito Bunka University), now a 4th-year, also broke the meet record, taking over 4 seconds off 2016 Olympian Anju Takamizawa 's old record to win in 9:53.64. Manami Nishiyama was next across the line in 10:01.67 but didn't count in standings due to being a corporate leaguer, leaving official 2nd-placer Nanase Tanimoto (Meijo Univ...

Japan's outdoor track season got moving with Saturday's Kanakuri Memorial Meet in Kumamoto. Mostly geared toward setting up chances for people to hit qualifying marks for this season's National Championships, the day's biggest race was the men's 1500 m . NR holder Kazuki Kawamura (Toenec) was a late scratch, but on the starting line were all-time JPN #2 Nanami Arai (Honda), U20, U18 and HS NR holder Keita Sato in his debut wearing the Komazawa University uniform, 3000 mSC NR holder Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.), indoor 5000 m NR holder Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) and more of Japan's best. Sato spent most of the race up front, going through the first three laps in 56-1:55-2:55, while Endo hung back until the bell. Going right past the lead group, Endo had a lead of almost 2 seconds over Arai with 200 m to go. But in the home straight Miura launched an incredible kick that just got Endo at the line. Miura clocked 3:36.59, good for all-time JPN #2 at 1.17 sec...

Nanaka Yonezawa showed incredible growth during her three years at Miyagi's Sendai Ikuei H.S. , and with her graduation she's now poised to go to the next level. Her first and third years at Sendai Ikuei its girls' team won the National High School Ekiden, she was 2nd in the National Track and Field Championships 1500 m in 2020, and she was the top-placing Japanese athlete in the 1500 m and 3000 m at last year's National High School Track and Field Championships. All that is more than enough to cement her place as the leader of her generation. In April Yonezawa will enter national champion Meijo University , but before she goes she talked about her memories of her three years of high school and her ambitions for the future. Originally from Shizuoka, Yonezawa travelled over 500 km to attend Sendai Ikuei. There she focused on the 1500 m and 3000 m, setting bests of 4:14.74 and 8:59.97, as well as a 5000 m best of 15:31.33. All three times put her in Japan's all-time...