japan running news

Earlier this month Aoyama Gakuin University broke its own course record to win the 102nd Hakone Ekiden , its 9th overall win and second three-peat. But in the background behind the brilliance of the almost unbeatable champion, one rookie on another team ran well in hopes of making the people back home who were still recovering from the Noto Hanto earthquake happy. To make that happen the same athlete left his position with one of the top corporations in the world to go to university with Hakone dreams. Let us tell you about Yamato Sugasaki , another Hakone Ekiden story. Born in Toyota, Aichi, Sugasaki played soccer through junior high school. But when he went to Toyota Kogaku Gijutsu H.S. , a private training school operated by the Toyota corporation, he switched to the track and field team. Sugasaki had watched the Hakone Ekiden on TV since he was a kid and decided that he wanted "to try something new," he says. His 3rd year of high school Sugsaki's times began to appr...

Things have really been coming up fast the last year or so in Japanese distance running, but even so this year's New Year Ekiden really felt like the era has changed. GMO took the lead on the second of the race's 7 legs and went on to take over 2 minutes off the overall course record for the 100.0 km course, winning its first national title in 4:44:00. En route 6 of the 7 legs had new CR, a lot of them with multiple people breaking them, and the only leg that didn't, the 12.3 km First Stage, saw Shunpei Tomita of Logisteed run 34:23, only 7 seconds off the CR held by sub-27 Kenyan Martin Mathathi . The level at the collegiate Hakone Ekiden keeps going up up up , and that showed here as 3 of the new stage CR were set by guys in their first season in the corporate leagues who were some of the biggest stars at Hakone last year. Aoyama Gakuin University grad Aoi Ota sneaked in 1 second ahead of Toyota 's Jin Yuasa to set a 46:00 CR on the 15.9 km Fifth Stage. Collegi...

After a day off for New Year's Eve, the peak of championship ekiden season rolls on first thing on Jan. 1 with the 70th edition of the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship race. The top 40 teams in the country race 100.0 km in 7 legs in Gunma, starting at 9:15 a.m. sharp on New Year's Day. Unedited raw camera feeds from the live broadcast will be streamed live on Youtube above starting at 9:10 a.m., with the official TBS broadcast starting at 8:30 a.m. and streaming of the broadcast on TVer . During the race live results will be posted here . Every team has to requalify for the New Year Ekiden by running one of the 6 regional corporate ekidens in early November. Usually they're pretty similar in length and elevation change at around 80 km, making a rough comparison of where teams stand fairly straightforward. This time the East Japan race was only 74.6 km and the Kyushu race 89.3 km, meaning that going by average pace the East Japan teams had an advant...

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...

ABC Television president Toshiaki Imamura , 62, held a press conference in Osaka on Jan. 24. There he talked about the new Expo Ekiden 2025 to be held in Osaka on Mar. 16, saying it was, "The first-ever showdown between the top corporate league and university teams." 9 teams from among the top placers at the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships including winner Asahi Kasei and last year's national champ Toyota are scheduled to race, along with the top 8 from November's National University Ekiden and one Kansai Region Collegiate Select Team. The field of 18 teams will start at Expo Memorial Park in Suita, Osaka, site of the 1970 World Expo, and cover roughly 55 km in 7 legs to the finish at Yumeshima, Osaka. At the same time, Susumu Hara , head coach of this year's Hakone Ekiden winning team Aoyama Gakuin University , voiced public criticism, saying, "This is a serious race between the two leagues, and some of the top corpora...

No big surprises at the New Year Ekiden , where 2025 kicked off with a battle between favorites Toyota , Honda and Asahi Kasei that came down to a sprint finish in the last 800 m of the 7-leg, 100 km race. 2017-2020 New Year Ekiden winner Asahi Kasei took the lead from the start with an opening leg win by Sonata Nagashima . On the longest leg, the 21.9 km Second Stage, Yuto Imae from the team most expected to challenge the big three, GMO , made it to the front, but with a great run from Tomoki Ota the defending champs Toyota took the lead on the Third Stage. Samuel Kibathi held on over the short Fourth Leg, but on the Fifth Leg Yusuke Nishiyama showed fatigue from his 2:06:54 at Fukuoka a month ago and was run down by Olympic steepler Ryoma Aoki from 2022-2023 New Year winner Honda and Asahi Kasei's Shuho Dairokuno . Looking very strong over a longer distance than he'd usually run, Aoki opened a 10-second lead on Dairokuno that Honda's 6th runner Toru Kubota turned...

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championship kicks off 2025 early, with streaming starting at 9:00 a.m. local time January 1st and the race going off at 9:15. At 7 legs totaling 100 km it's the peak of the year for the corporate leagues, the reason they have teams and bring in Kenyans. Last year Toyota led from the Second Stage to the finish, outrunning 2022-2023 winner Honda and 2017-2020 winner Asahi Kasei to take the national title for the first time since 2016. How is Toyota looking this year? On the one hand they've picked up fresh incoming talent like last year's Komazawa University captain Mebuki Suzuki . On the other, some of its key players like Tomoki Ota and Ren Tazawa have been dealing with injury, and at November's Chubu Region qualifying race Toyota lost by a minute to Toyota Boshoku , who broke the Chubu CR. A lot of Honda's A-list was missing from its lineup at the East Japan Region qualifying race , where it was only 7th out...

This year's Chicago Marathon will be remembered for one thing, cf. the photo above. No Japanese women were in the race to get thrashed by Ruth Chepngetich en route to her era-defining 2:09:56 world record, but five Japanese men were, and most of them did get thrashed. With a 2:06:35 PB Kyohei Hosoya (Kurosaki Harima) went out on low-2:04 NR pace, running comfortably through halfway before a surge from the pacers dropped him. Alone the rest of the way, Hosoya managed to run down some Ethiopian competition to take 6th overall in 2:07:20. Toshiki Sadakata (Mitsubishi Juko) spent most of the way working with American Zach Panning and then CJ Albertson to hit the 2:06:30 Tokyo World Championships standard, ultimately finishing 5 seconds behind Albertson in 8th in 2:08:22. After getting dropped by the JPN/USA men's group, Tomoki Yoshioka (Kyudenko) ended up running as an unofficial pacer for Chepngetich, but over the second half he couldn't match her strength and faded to ...

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In the first major race of 2024, Toyota took the lead on the 2nd leg to hold off two-time winner Honda for its first New Year Ekiden national title since 2016. The 12.3 First Stage had a 7-way sprint finish, with Naoki Ota (Yakult) taking the top spot over Hazuma Hattori (NTT Nishi Nihon) in 34:42 and 35-year-old Minato Oishi (Toyota) 4 seconds back in his final New Year Ekiden before retiring. On the new 21.9 km Second Stage, Ota's older brother Tomoki Ota (Toyota) immediately went to the front, initially with company from 2:06 marathoner Yohei Ikeda (Kao) and Ken Nakayama (Honda) but soon on his own. Ota, 2nd at last month's NR-breaking 10000 m National Championships, took advantage of a tailwind to win the stage in 1:01:40, a 59:25 half marathon equivalent, and hand off to new teammate Ren Tazawa . Tazawa, 4th at the 10000 m National Championships, split 27:35 en route on the 15.4 km Third Stage, and after Felix Korir held the lead on the new 7.8 km Fourth Leg it w...

Along with Saturday's The Fst in Fukuoka there was a lot going on on the roads this weekend across the country, but the biggest results were on the track. Saturday at the Nittai University Time Trials , Margaret Akidor (Comodi Iida) soloed a 14:47.71 Olympic standard 5000 m, over a minute faster than runner-up Kana Mizumoto (Edion) who ran 15:49.25. Akidor's coach reported her splits as 2:53.7 - 3:00.3 - 2:59.9 - 3:00.8 - 2:52.2. Charles Wanjiku Kamau (Musashino Gakuin Univ.) ran 27:40.58 to lead 10 men sub-28 in the fastest 10000 m heat, 5 of them Kenyan and 5 Japanese. Most notably, just 6 days after winning back-to-back stages at the National University Ekiden Josai University 2nd-year duo Victor Kimutai and Shoya Saito joined the sub-28 club, Kimutai 2nd in 27:41.04 and Saito 9th in 27:59.68. 3 other Josai runners were sub-29 in the B and C heats. Something has finally clicked at the Josai program this season, and together with great runs at Izumo and Nationals the r...

2:08:45 marathoner Chihiro Miyawaki , 31, tweeted on Feb. 19 that if he doesn't qualify for the Olympic marathon trials at next month's Tokyo Marathon he will quit the Toyota corporate team. "At the Mar. 5 Tokyo Marathon, if I don't make the qualifying bracket for the MGC Race then I will be leaving the Toyota team," he wrote. "I'm not calling it a retirement because I haven't been training for the Tokyo Marathon like it's my retirement race. I'm prepared to be on the starting line at the MGC Race, and I'm not running Tokyo just to put a punctuation mark on my career. I'll be running this race as the culmination of what I've accomplished so far, and I hope that you'll all cheer for me." The official marathon trials for the 2024 Paris Olympic team, the MGC Race is scheduled to take place in Tokyo on Oct. 15. Miyawaki joined Toyota after graduating from Chukyo H.S. In 2011 he ran his PB of 27:41.57 for 10000 m, at the tim...

On Feb. 1 the Toyota corporate team announced that Masashi Nonaka , 27, has transferred from longtime sponsor Osaka Gas to join the Toyota roster. Nonaka graduated from Kawanishi Hokuryo H.S. in Hyogo before attending Kwansei Gakuin University , where his achievements included a 7th-place finish in the 5000 m at the 2017 National University Track and Field Championships. Following his graduation from KGU Nonaka joined the Osaka Gas team, running track PBs of 13:35.94 for 5000 m and 27:58.38 for 10000 m in 2021. Last year he showed growth on the roads too, running 1:00:48 at the National Corporate Half Marathon and 2:09:57 at the Osaka Marathon. In comments published on the Toyota team site Nonaka said, "I'm really grateful to have the chance to take things to the next level alongside incredible teammates and staff in a great environment. Thank you all for your continued support." Nonaka is scheduled to run the Mar. 5 Tokyo Marathon. Toyota placed 3rd at this year...

The first big race of the year worldwide every year is the New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships, 100 km in 7 stages through Gunma northwest of Tokyo. TBS broadcasts it live domestically starting at 8:30 a.m. local on Jan. 1, with the broadcast to be streamed live on TVer . TBS will also be streaming live, unedited feeds from three different camera trucks too starting at 9:00 a.m. You'll probably need a VPN to get around geoblocking for both TVer and the unedited feed above. Live results will be here , and JRN will be covering the race live on @JRNLive  and Instagram to help you make sense of what's going on, and on the ground from the course. Buy us a coffee to help make the first of three straight days of live ekiden coverage possible. Last year the Honda team won for the first time in the race's 66-year history. Anchor Hidekazu Hijikata promptly jumped ship for CR holder Asahi Kasei , a product of 2020 rule changes around restrictions on team ...

The Japanese women's 2022 season still has big races to come, with the Sanyo Ladies Road Race 10 km and half marathon this weekend and the Nittai University Women's Long Distance Time Trials on Dec. 24, but for men the top lists for the year are pretty much a done deal barring something unexpected at the Dec. 24-25 Heisei Kokusai University Time Trials or Dec. 29 Year End Half Marathon . We'll wait until after Nittai for our women's rankings, but as men from JHS to the corporate leagues do their final preparations for the four championship ekidens over the next three weekends here's how they shaped out in 2022. Update: Women's rankings are here . Indoor 5000 m NR holder Hyuga Endo (Sumitomo Denko) took the top spot on the strength of a single run, his all-time JPN #2 13:10.69 win against an incredibly deep field of Japan-based Kenyans at the May 4 Golden Games in Noboeka . That came less than a month after his 3:36.69 1500 m at the Kanakuri Memorial Meet , a...

2019 Fukuoka International Marathon winner Taku Fujimoto , 32, retired from the Toyota corporate team after running the Mar. 6 Tokyo Marathon. As a participant in the 2019 Marathon Grand Championship Olympic trials Fujimoto was one of the country's best, but there's another side to him that most people don't know. In just his second marathon, Fujimoto ran an excellent 2:07:57 breakthrough for 8th at the 2018 Chicago Marathon. At the MGC he was only 9th, but he quickly rebounded to finish as the top Japanese placer at Fukuoka the same season. Fujimoto was 2nd across the finish line in that race, but the Moroccan who got there first was later disqualified for doping violations, elevating Fujimoto to the winner's position. After that Fujimoto had problems with injuries, but while he struggled to perform in marathons he was as good as ever in the ekiden. Even so, a year and a half ago he made the decision to retire at the end of the 2021-22 season. "I feel like I'...