japan running news

The first edition of the Asian U23 Athletics Championships kicked off Thursday in Ordos China with Japanese athlete picking up medals in 4 of the 6 finals in which they competed. With a 13:20.64 best in April this year Waseda University 's Rui Suzuki had an easy win in the men's 5000 m, running 14:01.24 to pick up Japan's first gold. Sota Orita of 2026 Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University struggled, though, running only 15:02.19 for 6th despite having run 13:38.09 in April. Sora Murata and Mitsuki Kobayashi picked up silver and bronze in the women's pole vault behind winner Lingxia Wei of China, with Aiha Yamagata adding another silver to the count with an 11.44 (+0.7) in the women's 100 m between Chinese gold and bronze medalists Kunzhi Xue and Xiajun Liu . One more bronze came in the women's hammer throw, where 2025/2026 national champ Raika Murakami threw a PB of 68.83 m on her 4th attempt. Yuto Yamamoto led the men's decathlon standing...

The 105th Kanto Region University Track and Field Championships will be held May 21-24 in Tochigi's Kanseki Stadium. Featuring World Championships national team members and Hakone Ekiden stars, it is the first time the meet is being held in Tochigi prefecture. The Kanto Regionals meet is open to member universities of the KGRR , with individual performances scoring points that determine the overall champion university program. The meet's history is even longer than that of the KGRR's flagship event, the Hakone Ekiden. All 22 events on the meet program except the men's half marathon, which was held separately on April 5 as part of the Yaizu Minato Half Marathon , will be held at Kanseki Stadium and the neighboring multipurpose field for throwing events. The entry list published on May 12 features Tokyo World Championships relay team member Arie Aoki (Nittai Univ.) in the 400 m. The men's 5000 m includes both Hakone Ekiden uphill Fifth Stage star Shinsaku Kudo (Was...

Having scored its 3rd-straight Hakone Ekiden win this past January, Aoyama Gakuin University spent the Golden Week spring holidays training on the Myoko Plateau in Niigata from May 2-6. Along with the champion men's ekiden team, the first 2 members of AGU's new women's long distance team Nodoka Ashida and Kairi Ikeno , and AGU alumni and 2026 New Year Ekiden champion GMO team members Yuya Yoshida and Asahi Kuroda also took part in the training camp. Depending on the day's training schedule, mileage at the camp was over 50 km a day. AGU men's captain Kaito Nakamura confidently said, "This Golden Week training camp is where we lay the foundations for our 4th-straight Hakone title." A lot of people spend Golden Week on vacation, but the AGU ekiden team spent their time working hard on Myoko's rolling land amid the sprouting leaves of spring. On the 2nd day of the camp, May 3, team members woke up at 5:00 a.m. to do their warmup. The team assembled a...

Aoyama Gakuin University head coach Susumu Hara  took the opposite of the usual approach on Day One of the 102nd Hakone Ekiden yesterday, starting with his weakest two runners and building up to his absolute best. First runner Hikaru Ogawara was only 16th of 21, but Day One anchor Asahi Kuroda delivered one of the best performances in Hakone history on the uphill Fifth Stage, breaking its CR by 2 almost 2 minutes and coming from over a kilometer behind to give AGU the Day One win in CR time. With AGU's 9th win in the last 12 years and its second threepeat in the works, it blew apart the rest of the field over the 5-stage, 109.6 km Day Two course. Last year AGU's Akimu Nomura became the first runner to break 57 minutes on the 20.8 km Sixth Stage that kicks off the second day of the legendary race, starting at 731 m, climbing to 874 m in the first 5 km, then dropping to near sea level by its end. Popular speculation pre-race was that AGU would get caught by at least one of ...

Japan got one step closer to its first sub-27 minute 10000 m Saturday at the Hachioji Long Distance meet. Conditions were as perfect as they could have been, and as the heats went by it was clear that something big was coming. The E and D-heats both had winning times under 28:10. In the C-heat Hiromichi Nonaka held off alum and former collegiate marathon record holder Kiyoto Hirabayashi to set a Koku Gakuin University school record 27:36.64, Hirabayashi right behind in a 27:37.13 PB and the top 7 all under 28. The B-heat went even faster, Yuto Imae kicking to win in 27:33.84, 4th-placer Kaisei Okada setting a Chuo University school record 27:37.06, and the top 17 all under 28 minutes. Close by another meet was happening at the same time, the MARCH Taikosen time trial meet made up of the Meiji University , Aoyama Gakuin University , Rikkyo University , Chuo, and Hosei University teams. The A-heat there was massive too, with collegiate marathon record holder Asahi Kuroda runnin...

It's the point in the season where Hakone Ekiden-bound university coaches are farming out their squads to half marathons to sort through the contenders to make their 16-runner Hakone entry rosters. Next weekend's Ageo City Half Marathon is the biggest of them, but two key races happened today. In rainy conditions at the Setagaya 246 Half in Tokyo, Shoki Yamaguchi (Soka Univ.) won a sprint finish against sub-60 man Paul Kuira (JR Higashi Nihon), Kuira overtaking Yamaguchi after Yamaguchi had pulled away over the last km but Yamaguchi fighting back on the track. Both clocked 1:01:46, but Yamaguchi succeeded in snagging the win away from Kuira right before the line. In 3rd, Aito Sato led a massive group from 2025 Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University with a PB of 1:01:57 for 3rd. 5 other AGU runner were under 63 minutes, all but one breaking 62:30 and most in PBs, with Kotaro Suzuki (Chuo Univ.), 8th in 1:02:28, and Yota Aoteki (Hosei Univ.), 10th in 1:02:46 breaking up AGU...

Day two of the 103rd Kanto Regionals meet took place Friday at Tokyo's National Stadium and other facilities. The 1500 m was the only mid or long-distance final on the program, and in the D1 women's final 4th-yr Yuiri Ogata (Nittai Univ.) scored a dominant win with a 4:19.08 PB that put her 2 1/2 seconds up on 2nd-placer Yui Yoshii (Daito Bunka Univ.). 4th-yr Hiroto Takamura (Nittai Univ.) won the D1 men's title in 3:45.65, with 2nd-yr Ryoto Aoki (Rikkyo Univ.) taking the top spot in a strategic D2 men's final in 3:52.93. D2 men also had a round of 5000 m qualifiers on the program. Kenyans took the top four spots in Heat 1 led by newcomer Brian Kiptoo (Reitaku Univ.) in 13:50.47, with Hakone Ekiden runner-up Komazawa University 4th-yr Kota Nakaya outrunning Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University 1st-yr Sota Orita for 1st in the slower Heat 2, 14:04.47 to 14:04.95. The final happens Sunday alongside the D1 men's and women's races. In other noteworthy per...

Day two of the 21st U20 Asian Athletics Championships in Dubai was capped with Japan's first gold medal of the games. Less than a month into his first year at 2024 Hakone Ekiden champ Aoyama Gakuin University , sub-13:30 high schooler Sota Orita fought off multiple surges from Indian duo Gaurav Bhaskar Bhosale and Vinod Singh to take 5000 m gold in 14:08.71 with 56-second last lap and big a move on the last curve. His new AGU teammate Kaito Iida also finished strong for bronze, coming up just short of silver in 14:09.63. Miku Yanagawa (Gunma T&F Assoc.) added another gold medal to the count in the women's pole vault, winning at 3.85 m on her first attempt, with silver and bronze medalists Anna Cherkashina of Kazakhstan and Melabessy Andriani of Indonesia only going as high as 3.60 m. Nono Tsuneishi (Fukuoka Univ.) won silver in the women's long jump, jumping 6.21 (+0.7) on her 3rd attempt. Gold medalist Nagaraj Pavana also dropped her biggest jump in the third...

The Japanese U20 men had a near-miss on team bronze at the Belgrade World Cross Country Championships Saturday, taking 4th behind Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. Tomoya Inoue had the best individual performance of the day by a Japanese runner at 16th, with other scoring members Kaito Matsui , Sota Orita and Yamato Hamaguchi all placing in the top 22. Both the U20 and senior women's teams took 6th, Miyu Murakami leading the junior women at 19th and Miku Sakai the senior women at 22nd. The mixed relay team also make single digits, placing 7th, but the senior men were a disappointing 12th. 2:08:20 marathoner Hiroto Fujimagari led the senior men at 48th overall. More video highlights on the World Athletics Youtube channel. Detailed stories and complete results: U20 Women : Alemayo Dominates to Lead Ethiopia to Team U20 Gold in Belgrade Results : individual ・ team U20 Men : Kibathi Outsprints Sime to Secure U20 Title in Belgrade Results :  individual ・ team Mixed Relay : Kenya Runs ...

Lots of big meets coming up, and entry lists are promising some top Japanese talent at three of the first major ones. On Mar. 7 the JAAF announced a team of 12 men and 12 women for the Mar. 30 Belgrade World Cross Country Championships , with senior men's 10 km 3rd-placer Yuta Bando (Fujitsu) the only one of the top-placing athletes at last month's National Cross Country Championships to pass on running Worlds. There hasn't been any announcement of withdrawals by the JAAF, but as of this writing the official entry lists on the Worlds site list only 5 men and 7 women. All four people on the mixed relay team are there including the Louisiana State University -bound Yuya Sawada (Hamamatsu Shiritsu H.S.) and 1500 m NR holder Nozomi Tanaka (New Balance), but senior men's national champ Tomonori Yamaguchi (Waseda Univ.), the entire U20 men's team, and all but U20 women's 4th-placer Chiseno Ikeda (Ritsumeikan Uji H.S.) are missing. It has to be wrong, right? The...

At the 2nd Kobayashi Time Trials meet Mar. 16 in Kobayashi, Miyazaki, Suma Gakuen H.S. 3rd-year Sota Orita , the 2nd-fastest high schooler ever over 5000 m with a best of 13:28.78, ran 8:00.14 in the 3000 m A-heat. That time was good enough to put him at all-time #4 on the Japanese high school lists. Orita will start school at 2024 Hakone Ekiden winner Aoyama Gakuin University and moved into the AGU team dorm a week ago. He is currently on a training camp in Mizukami, Kumamoto with other incoming AGU 1st-years. source article: https://www.rikujyokyogi.co.jp/archives/131210 translated by Brett Larner

The Inuyama Half Marathon and National Cross Country Championships are happening Sunday, with Japan's team for March's Belgrade World Cross Country Championships to be mostly drawn from top placers in the different divisions at Nationals. It's being streamed above starting at 10:20 local time, with fields including Takuya Hanyu , Ryuto Igawa , Hazuma Hattori , Yuta Bando , Tomonori Yamaguchi and Masato Imai in the senior men's 10 km, Momoka Kawaguchi , Nana Kuraoka and Chika Kosakai in the senior women's 8 km, Sota Orita , Ryuto Kawahara , Tetsu Sasaki , Shunsuke Kuwata and Soma Nagahara in the junior men's 8 km, and Narumi Okumoto and Nodoka Ashida in the junior women's 6 km. But the main race Sunday is the Osaka Marathon . One of the world's biggest mass-participation marathons, Osaka has deep elite fields especially on the men's side. That's not surprising since for Japanese men it's one of the designated races where they have a...

Running with three returning members of last year's course record-breaking team, Nagano pulled off another CR to win its 3rd-straight National Men's Ekiden title Sunday in Hiroshima thanks in large part to a stellar run from anchor Mebuki Suzuki from Komazawa University . Last year's opening leg 3rd-placer Ryuto Kawahara of Nagasaki got things started with a 2:44 opening km on the 7.0 km First Stage, then let 2023 National High School Ekiden First Stage winner Sota Orita of Hyogo take over. Orita did most of the work through the middle part of the stage, then with 1.5 km to go Kawahara attacked and pulled away to break the 19:39 CR set by Sonata Nagashima last year by 8 seconds. It was one of those runs that makes the National Men's Ekiden great, with someone from a high school that isn't good enough to make Nationals taking down one of the big stars whose team did. In a four-way sprint for 2nd Nagano's Yamato Hamaguchi was 4th and Orita 5th, both one s...

The National High School Ekiden happened Sunday in Kyoto, its 35th edition for girls and 74th for boys. With last year's 3rd-place Kamimura Gakuen H.S. set to run last year's anchor stage winner Caroline Kariba on anchor again, it was all about trying to open as much room as they could over the first four stages for girls' race favorites Sendai Ikuei H.S. and Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. Sendai Ikuei moved up from 3rd to 1st on the 4.0975 km 2nd leg thanks to a stage-winning run by Daisy Jerop and stayed there over the next two legs. Ritsumeikan Uji was in 2nd the entire way, closing the gap to Sendai Ikuei to 30 seconds by the end of the 4th leg after 3rd and 4th runners Nodoka Ashida and Yua Sato won their stages. Kamimura Gakuen started slow at 13th after the first leg but moved up through the field every stage until it was in 3rd when Kariba started. With 5.0 km to work with she was 50 seconds behind Ritsumeikan Uji and 1:20 behind Sendai Ikuei, an almost impossible ma...