japan running news

The Osaka team took its 5th national title Sunday at the 9-stage, 42.195 km National Women's Ekiden in Kyoto over Hyogo and Nagano . Nagano's Haruna Tabata opened a 5-second lead on the 6.0 km First Stage, the first time a high schooler had won the opening leg since Ririka Hironaka in 2019. With that momentum Nagano held the lead through the first 6 stages. But a change came on the 4.0 km Seventh Stage. Starting 19 seconds back in 3rd, Osaka's Rio Kawamura put in a brilliant run to overtake both Hyogo and Nagano, handing off with a 16-second lead by the end of the stage. Hyogo went past Osaka on the 3.0 km Eighth Stage to take the top position for the first time, but with only a 5-second gap at the start of the 10.0 km Ninth Stage it came down to a battle between Hyogo anchor Rio Einaga and Osaka's Ayu Henmi . After catching up Henmi stayed locked to Einaga throughout the stage before kicking just past 1 km to go and running away to break the finish line tape in ...

photo © 2025 Victah Sailer/Photo Run, all rights reserved On Jan. 8 the Edion women's corporate team announced that Ai Hosoda , 30, will retire at the end of March this year. The Tokyo Marathon will be her last race. At Nagano Higashi H.S. Hosoda ran in the National High School Ekiden her 2nd and 3rd years. During her 3rd year at Nittai University she won both the 5000 m and 10000 m at the Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships, going on to win the bronze medal in the 10000 m at the World University Games in her 4th year at Nittai. After graduating she joined the Daihatsu corporate team, debuting at the 2019 Nagoya Women's Marathon in 2:29:27. 2 years later she transferred to Edion. She qualified for the Paris Olympics marathon trials at the 2022 Nagoya Women's Marathon and finished 3rd in the trials in the fall of 2023, but was later bumped down to Olympic alternate after another athlete ran a faster time. Instead of the Olympics, Hosoda ran the 2024 Ber...

The Panasonic women's corporate team announced this week on its official website that Sora Shinozakura has left its program. Shinozakura placed 5th in the 5000 m at last June's National Track and Field Championships, and last Sunday she was 3rd on the opening leg at the National Women's Ekiden while running for the Kanagawa prefecture team. Shinozakura joined Panasonic after graduating from Tachibana H.S. in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. "The Panasonic Angels were a local team based in Kanagawa where I'm from, and they were always something I admired right from my school days," she said. "I'll never forget how happy it made me to put on that blue singlet for the first time. My 5 years as part of the team gave me the chance to concentrate on the sport I love in a fantastic environment, and I got to go places and experience things I never would have imagined. I'm truly grateful. As part of the team I got to hand off the tasuki to some of its more experi...

Host team Kyoto was back on top at Sunday's National Women's Ekiden , taking the lead on the 2nd of the 42.195 km race's 9 legs and rolling on to win its 19th national title in the event's 43-year history in 2:15:26 with 4 individual stage wins. Kyoto's lead runner Kokoro Nakachi was only 3 seconds behind First Stage winner Erika Tanoura of Chiba , and it didn't take much for its next runner Yua Sato to move into the top spot by 3 seconds. That lead grew to 50 seconds at the end of the Fifth Stage before a stage-winning run from Nagano 's Nami Kawakami on the Sixth Stage cut it back to 33 seconds. But driven by stage wins from 7th runner Momoka Onishi and anchor Kaede Kawamura , from there to the end Kyoto pulled away to its final margin of victory of 2:26. Nagano and Osaka were locked in a duel for 2nd for most of the way, but with only 3 km to go on the 10.0 km anchor stage Fukuoka and early leader Chiba caught up to make it a four-way race. Nagano...

Sunday's National Women's Ekiden brings together the country's top distance runners from junior high school to the pros, all running for their home prefectures. NHK will broadcast the race live , commercial-free and nationwide starting at 12:30. local time. A quick guide to the top teams and athletes on each stage. Hosts Kyoto hold the record for most wins with 18 national titles, and they're expected to face tough competition from Osaka , Nagano , Kanagawa and Chiba . 2nd the last two years, this time around Kyoto's lineup features two members of Ritsumeikan University , the winner at this season's Morinomiyako Ekiden and Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden. Yumi Yamamoto ran in last year's U20 World Championships and set a new CR on her leg at the Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden, and she, teammate Tomo Muramatsu , and Kaede Kawamura , winner of December's Sanyo Ladies Road Race 10 km, give Kyoto's chances a big boost. 2023 winner Osaka has World Championsh...

Fresh off a sub-31 PB at last month's 10000 m National Championships, Haruka Kokai ran down Kotona Ota of longtime leader Hyogo on the anchor stage to give the Miyagi prefecture team its first National Women's Ekiden title in 29 years. Women-only half marathon NR holder Rino Goshima went out hard to put earthquake and tsunami-hit Ishikawa in the lead by 35 seconds on the 6.0 km First Stage, but a Second Stage win by 1500 m and 5000 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka put Hyogo into a lead it held until midway through the final stage. Shizuoka and Chiba both spent time in 2nd and at times closed on Hyogo only to get dropped again. The 4.1075 km Fifth Stage was especially good, with sub-32 collegian Risa Yamazaki of Chiba running down high school 1st-year Kairi Ikeno for the lead only to get retaken by Ikeno, with both breaking the 1995-era CR for the stage. Behind them, Miyagi was working its way up through the field, improving its position every stage except the Third until Y...

On Jan. 11 Asahi Kuroda , winner of the highly competitive Second Stage for overall champion Aoyama Gakuin University at the 100th Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 2, announced that his next race will be the Jan. 21 National Men's Ekiden in Hiroshima. At the seven-stage, 48.0 km race he said he hopes to be on a stage adjacent to the one his younger brother Zen Kuroda of Tamano Mitsunan H.S. runs so that they can hand off the tasuki together. Two stages at the National Men's Ekiden are for collegiate and corporate league runners, three are reserved for high schoolers, and two for junior high school athletes. Representing Okayama prefecture, the older Kuroda brother is scheduled to run the 8.5 km Third Stage, with the younger brother, who will enter the Aoyama Gakuin team in April, is set to run the 5.0 km Fourth Stage. "This will be the first time we've run an ekiden together since I was in my third year of high school and he was in his first," said Asahi. "I'm ...

  1st-year Sherry Drury (Tsuyama H.S.) broke the Chugoku Region high school girls' 1500 m record of 4:17.64, running a new record of 4:16.76 to win the Chugoku Region High School Championships 1500 m final on June 16. In winning she secured her place at next month's National High School Championships in Sapporo. On the morning of the 16th Drury took 4th in her 1500 m qualifying heat in 4:36.60. In the final she sat in 3rd through most of the race. With one lap to go she moved into 2nd, and with 200 m to go dropped a sudden kick that gave her a margin of victory of almost 4 seconds. Post-race she commented, "We went out on a good pace in the first 400 m and I got into a good rhythm for the rest of the race. My body felt light and I was feeling good. People cheering for me helped too." In January this year Drury ran the National Women's Ekiden as a 3rd-year in junior high school. Her 9:02 course record for her 3.0 km stage drew attention nationally and internatio...

On Mar. 3 Tsuyama 9th grader Sherry Drury withdrew from Sunday's Biwako Cross Country Meet. An attorney representing Ms. Drury made the announcement, saying that she is uncomfortable with the amount of media coverage of her recent races and doesn't know how to deal with all the people stopping her to take pictures and talk to her. In comments made public by her attorney Ms. Drury said, "Because of all the changes since the National Women's Ekiden I can't train in freedom like I did before, and all the media reporting on me is wearing me out. I don't like them reporting on things outside my running, things in my private life that I've never talked about publicly like my studies and hobbies. Some magazine reporters have interviewed our neighbors and other people who know me, and some have even gone to my classmates' homes to try to interview them. I don't want other people to have to go through that because of me. I'm going to keep running in h...

The top Japanese woman in the marathon at last summer's Oregon World Championships, Mizuki Matsuda went from 3rd to 1st on the anchor stage to give the Osaka team its fourth national title Sunday at the National Women's Ekiden in Kyoto. Osaka was 4th after the 6.0 km 1st leg and was never worse that than. 2nd runner Saya Nakajima put them in the lead, where they stayed for the next five of the 42.195 km race's nine stages except for a brief drop back to 4th when its fourth runner Chihiro Sato struggled. Fifth runner Yua Tsukamoto turned it back around, but with only a 1-second lead at the start of her stage junior high schooler Rio Kawamura couldn't hold off Fukuoka 's Shiina Sugahara and Tokyo 's Yuna Oki and dropped to 3rd. Matsuda started only 5 seconds out of 1st and had no trouble overtaking Tokyo anchor Yuri Karasawa and Fukuoka's Wakana Itsuki to go back out front. Matsuda turned in the fastest run on the 10.0 km anchor stage, 31:22, to br...

The 9-stage, 42.195 km National Women's Ekiden takes place Jan. 15 in Kyoto starting and finishing at Takebishi Stadium. Absent from the stage entry list published Jan. 14 was the Gunma prefecture team's Seira Fuwa , 19, the collegiate 10000 m national record holder and a 2nd-year at Takushoku University . Her high school coach Hatsuo Kitada is serving as the Gunma team's coach this year. "We're looking toward her future," he said. "Now's not the time to overdo it." At last year's National Women's Ekiden Fuwa passed 13 people on the 4.0 km 4th leg, breaking its course record. Following that performance she sustained an Achilles tendon injury that kept her out of competition for most of 2022. In October she won her stage at the Morinomiyako Ekiden, but in order to ensure her continued recovery she did not run in December's Mt. Fuji Women's Ekiden national championships. Wakana Kabasawa of 2022 National Corporate Women's Eki...

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 ...

Appearing on the news23 program on May 9, former women's marathon world record holder and Sydney Olympics marathon gold medalist Naoko Takahashi commented on 19-year-old Takushoku University 2nd-year Seira Fuwa 's withdrawal from the May 7 10000 m National Championships , the qualifying event for this summer's Oregon World Championships. "There's no need to overdue it," Takahashi said. "She's someone with the talent and ability to run 30:45.21, the 2nd-fastest time in Japanese history, in her first time running the 10000 m, an extremely high-potential athlete. The most important thing for her right now is to take it easy and fully recover from her injury. She's just 19 and has only just started on the road to realizing her dreams, and I'd like to ask everyone out there to support her in the longterm. Let's all take good care of her." Last month Takahashi interviewed Fuwa for the program, telling her, "If I had to say one thing...

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...

 On Dec. 22 the Wacoal women's corporate team announced that former 5000 m and half marathon national record holder Kayoko Fukushi  will retire after two final races in January, the National Women's Ekiden on Jan. 16 and the Osaka Half Marathon on Jan. 30. A four-time Olympian, Fukushi won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2013 Moscow World Championships and is a two-time winner of the Osaka International Women's Marathon. Her debut marathon in Osaka in 2008 remains one of the wildest and most memorable in elite marathoning history. In a handwritten statement Fukushi wrote, "For these 22 years on the Wacoal team I've been nuts about running. I met a lot of people...there've been a lot of tears and a lot of laughs...so many different things every day. It really was an interesting career! Thanks to all of you who've supported me over the years. I really am grateful, from the heart. I'm going to run these last two races just like I always have, a...