japan running news

After Saturday's Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying race in Tokyo, 2nd-tier corporate women's teams were in Fukuoka for their own national championships qualifying race, the Princess Ekiden . With Queens Ekiden 19-placer Otsuka Seiyaku a DNS, 30 teams lined up for the 6-stage, 42.195 km race where the top 16 would go on to join the top 8 from last year's Queens Ekiden at next month's national race. Coming right in the middle of the international fall marathon season several teams had people still tired from Berlin and Chicago, with Daihatsu fielding Rika Kaseda and Natsuki Omori from Berlin, Tokyo Metro sending out its own Berlin duo of Mao Uesugi and Ayumi Morita , and Kraftia not playing its top member Yuka Akasaki after her solid run in Chicago last week. After a fast start from eventual 9th-placer Denso 's Rio Matsutani , Daihatsu took over on the Second Stage and held it until the Fifth, where a tired Omori dropped to 3rd. Mayuka Fujita from Route Inn H...

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's Queens Ekiden is the season-ending national championship race for corporate women's teams, 6 legs totaling 42.195 km through the Sendai countryside. It's a pretty interesting race up front this year. Last year Shiseido shook off revelations of a toxic team culture to win for the first time since 2006, with 2021 winner Sekisui Kagaku 2nd and 2020 champ Japan Post 3rd. Shiseido has had an exodus since then, including head coach Yoshitaka Iwamizu and star runner Tomoka Kimura , who jumped ship to go to Sekisui Kagaku. It still has at least half a quality team, including Olympic marathon trials runner-up Mao Ichiyama , Kenyan Judy Jepngetich , women-only half marathon NR holder Rino Goshima and veteran Yuka Takashima , but the win will be tough. Sekisui Kagaku has the lineup to win, although that's due more to its budget that head coach Hidenori Noguchi 's abilities. Most of its A-team was either poached from other teams, Kimura from Shiseido and Rina Ku...

2014 Incheon Asian Games women's 10000 m bronze medalist Ayumi Hagiwara (Toyota Jidoshokki) has finally emerged from a long, dark tunnel. Running her first half marathon in five years this February she broke her PB by one second. "I feel as though I've managed to get the hands moving a little on a watch that had stopped," she said, measuring her words thoughtfully. Hagiwara graduated from Shizuoka's Tokoha Kikugawa H.S., joining the Uniqlo corporate team where she was coached by Hideo Suzuki who had previously led World Championships medalist Reiko Tosa to success in the marathon. With her Asian Games bronze and a run that helped the Japanese national team win the 2014 International Chiba Ekiden she quickly gained attention. But when injury struck she was forced to cancel her planned marathon debut, and things started to fall apart. She had a disastrous run in the 10000 m at the 2016 National Championships and failed to make the Rio Olympic team. When her...

A woman who received cash from scam victims as part of a swindling group was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department after attempting to defraud an elderly woman. The arrested woman was a former member of one of the top corporate league women's ekiden teams. Miho Shimada , 20, an unemployed resident of Gotemba, Shizuoka, was arrested on suspicion of calling an 80-year-old woman in Taito-ku, Tokyo and telling her, "I lost a check for funds to set up a company. I need 3 million yen," in an attempt to steal the elderly woman's cash. "I did it because I wanted money," she said in admitting to the charges. Translator's note: A star member of the Yamanashi Gakuin High School girls' ekiden team who ran times of 9:01.23 for 3000 m and 15:43.35 for 5000 m while still in high school, Shimada joined the Toyota Jidoshokki corporate women's team after her graduation in 2016. The 2nd-place team at the National Corporate Women's Ekiden Champi...

Dodging a bullet as an approaching typhoon that spelled potential cancellation shifted to the east, the Princess Ekiden , the qualifying race for second-tier teams for next month's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships, went off Sunday afternoon in Fukuoka. The top 14 of the 29 teams in the field would qualify to join the seeded first-tier teams at Nationals in the third year of the event's current format shift from a series of regional qualifiers. 12th in 2015 and 4th last year, Panasonic took over the lead on the 3.6 km Second Stage and tried to run away with it, but behind them Toyota Jidoshokki grew closer and closer after a weak opening stage. With just one second separating them at the final exchange it was going to be close, but although Panasonic anchor Sakiko Naito was strong, covering the 6.695 km Sixth Stage in 21:43, Toyota Jidoshokki's Misaki Hayashida went one better, dropping a course record 21:35 to run Naito down and put Toyota Jidosho...

by Brett Larner 【クイーンズ駅伝】 スタート！💨🏃👧💨🏃 上位８位までがシード権！ 頑張れーーー💪(^o^) pic.twitter.com/8uhtPo7WIS — NOBUKI T&F (@hagechabin123) November 27, 2016 In just its third year of existence the Japan Post Group team swept to the top of Japan's corporate women's league, winning the 36th running of the National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships Sunday in Sendai, Miyagi.  Featuring Rio track Olympians Ayuko Suzuki and Hanami Sekine , Japan Post was in it from the start.  Lead runner Kyoka Nakagawa got the team off in 4th as she covered the 7.0 km First Stage in 22:01, 11 seconds off leader Mao Ichiyama 's 21:50 course record and 9 seconds under the old course record.  Still on the mend from the injury that hit her just before Rio, Suzuki was 5th on time on the 3.9 km Second Stage but still improved Japan Post's position to 3rd.  Sekine and fourth runner Rina Iwataka held steady in 3rd before fifth runner Rina Nabeshima got to work. Covering 10.0 km o...

by Brett Larner National championship ekiden season got off to a good start at Sunday's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships , where two-time defending champion Team Denso led seven teams under the 2:16:12 course record it set last year on the way to its third-straight win with new records on four of the 42.195 km course's six stages. Denso's Yuki Mitsunobu led off, missing the First Stage record by 1 second as she handed off just behind Ayumi Sakaida (Team Daihatsu).  Denso's next two runners Naoko Koizumi and Yuka Takashima scored records on their stages to give their team a lead that was never broken despite new Fourth and Fifth Stage records by rivals Sally Chepyego (Team Kyudenko) and Risa Yokoe (Team Toyota Jidoshokki).  Denso anchor Nami Hashimoto was the only stage winner not to tie or set an individual record but her 21:26 for the 6.795 km Sixth Stage was more than enough to maintain Denso's lead of almost a minute over Toyota Ji...

http://www.jiji.com/jc/zc?k=201502/2015020100194&g=spo translated by Brett Larner Having recently announced her retirement, 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi (26, Team Toyota Jidoshokki) finished with a smile at her final race on Feb. 1 at the local Hyogo Prefecture Ekiden.  Running the 5 km anchor stage for her hometown Ono-shi, Kobayashi brought the team home in 3rd overall.  "I'm really grateful to all the people who cheered for me and called out, 'Thank you!' as I ran," she said.  "It almost made me cry.  I'm a very happy person." Kobayashi ran the 1500 m national record while at Hyogo's Suma Gakuen H.S. , going on to run against the best in the world in the 5000 m at world-level events like the Beijing Olympics.  It was a sign of how much of an inspiration she is to junior high school and high school runners that Kobayashi was surrounded by people asking for autographs and pictures together.  After retiring Kobayashi ...

http://www.kobe-np.co.jp/news/sports/201501/0007673131.shtml translated and edited by Brett Larner 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi (26, Toyota Jidoshokki), a Beijing Olympian over 5000 m, will retire at the end of this season due to a series of injuries according to an announcement on Jan. 19.  After her retirement she plans to make a living on the lecture circuit and making guest appearances at major races across the country. Kobayashi became a middle distance star while at Asahigaoka J.H.S. in Ono, Hyogo.  While at Suma Gakuen H.S. she won the National Championships and National High School Championships, setting the 1500 m national record of 4:07.86 in 2006.  Later the same year she won the National High School Ekiden's Second Stage to help Suma Gakuen win the national title.  After graduating she joined the Toyota Jidoshokki team, making the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2009 Berlin World Championships teams.  She later spent time living ...

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.sponichi.co.jp/sports/news/2014/01/25/kiji/K20140125007456230.html translated and edited by Brett Larner photo by Mika Tokairin On Jan. 25 a representative of Moscow World Championships women's 10000 m 5th-placer Hitomi Niiya  (25, Team Universal Entertainment) announced Niiya's retirement.  A press conference to explain the decision is scheduled for Jan. 31. Born in Okayama, as a student at Kojokan H.S. she won her stage at the National High School Ekiden Championships three years in a row.  In 2006 she joined the Toyota Jidoshoki corporate team, and the following year at age 18 won the first Tokyo Marathon.  In 2011 she  left Toyota Jidoshokki to remain with coach Yoshio Koide  when the team moved from Chiba to Aichi, qualifying as an independent for the Daegu World Championships where she made the final in the 5000 m .  After joining the Universal Entertainment team she won the 2012 National Championships 5000 m , and at th...

by Brett Larner Sunday's National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships kick off a busy string of championship road relays across Japan, with no less than eight major events in five weeks.  The Dec. 16 race in Sendai is the peak of the year for corporate-league women, with the country's top marathoners and track runners from twenty-nine teams squaring off over a six-stage, 42.195 km course.  TBS will broadcast the ekiden live nationwide beginning at 11:50 a.m. local time.  It should be possible for overseas viewers to use Keyhole TV to catch the race, but JRN will also offer live coverage via Twitter @JRNLive . The favorites look to be evenly divided between the three national divisions.   Team Universal Entertainment  won the East Japan regional qualifier last month by 3 1/2 minutes over defending national champion Team Daiichi Seimei  and comes to Nationals seeded #1.  A major factor in Universal's performance was a win on East Japan's longest...

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20120403-OYT1T00526.htm?from=tw translated by Brett Larner At roughly 6:50 a.m. on Apr. 3, Shigeo Hasegawa , 48, head coach of National Corporate Women's Ekiden champion Team Toyota Jidoshokki , was seriously injured when a 3.5 m-tall baseball backstop fell on him in gale-force winds at Toyota Jidoshokki's Kariya Training Grounds in Kariya, Aichi.  According to a statement from the police, Hasegawa and ten members of the Toyota Jidoshokki team were at the training ground for morning practice.  The backstop, used for baseball batting practice, began to fall over in the strong winds and Hasegawa moved to stop it from toppling.  A steel pole in the backstop struck his pelvis and lower back, breaking bones and causing serious injury.  At the time of the incident there was a strong wind warning for the Aichi area as a storm front swept across the country.

by Brett Larner Update: Click here for start lists .  Noguchi is not listed as a starter for Sysmex. The biggest race of the year for professional Japanese women takes place this Sunday on a new course in Sendai, the six-stage, 42.195 km National Corporate Women's Ekiden Championships .  The highlight of this year's edition looks like a possible showdown between Japan's two best hopes for the London Olympics marathon, marathon national record holder Mizuki Noguchi  (Team Sysmex) and half-marathon national record holder Kayoko Fukushi  (Team Wacoal).  In the overall team competition the Corporate Championships debut of 1500 m national record holder Yuriko Kobayashi  makes 2008 champion Team Toyota Jidoshokki  the favorite, but defending champion Team Tenmaya  and East Japan rivals Team Daiichi Seimei  and Team Sekisui Kagaku  are not far behind.  The race will be broadcast live on TBS beginning at 11:50 a.m. Japan time on Sunday,...

http://www.toyota-shokki.co.jp/news/2011/110323athletics/ translated by Brett Larner The Toyota Jidoshokki Women's Track and Field Team hereby announces that effective April 1, 2011, it will relocate its training base to Kariya, Aichi. On March 23 the team registered its membership with the central Japan Chubu Corporate Track and Field Association. As a company-sponsored team, the Toyota Jidoshokki team management wished to be closer to the parent company's headquarters and through sports to help make a positive contribution to the company's workers. The women's track and field team has been based in Sakura, Chiba since 2001, but by relocating to the company's headquarters in Kariya, Aichi they hope to help foster a stronger community feeling among the general workforce. In addition, Shigeo Hasegawa , head coach of 2010 National High School Ekiden champions Kojokan H.S., will take over as Toyota Jidoshokki head coach. The team's athletes have left the Sakura ...

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 ...

http://www.nikkansports.com/sports/joshi-ekiden/2009/news/f-sp-tp0-20091209-574251.html translated by Brett Larner The 2009 National Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden Championships take place this Sunday, Dec. 13 in Gifu. The top 27 teams from across the country will face off over the 6-stage, 42.195 km course. Last year Team Toyota Jidoshoki took its first-ever national title with a surprise win. This year the team returns a step ahead of the pack as the clear favorite. Its pair of 21 year old aces Hitomi Niiya and Akane Wakita led Toyota Jidoshoki to victory with stage best titles at the East Japan Jitsugyodan Women's Ekiden and will again be a major factor in its 2009 Nationals run. East Japan runner-up Team Hokuren also looks strong, with World Championships marathoner Yukiko Akaba and national jitsugyodan 5000 and 10000 m double champion Philes Ongori leading the way. Last year's national runner-up Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo 's chances largely depend on whether the...

by Brett Larner Team Nissin Shokuhin returned to the top in the 50th East Japan Jitsugyodan Ekiden Championships on the strength of its crop of star recruits over the last two years. Nissin's first five runners, Bene Zama, Yuki Sato, Gideon Ngatuny, Kazuyoshi Tokumoto and Satoru Kitamura, all took stage best titles and built up an insurmountable lead of a minute and a half which Sixth Stage runner Yuzo Onishi and anchor Kosaka Hoshina were easily able to maintain. Last year's winner Team Honda was 2nd, with the formidable Team Konica Minolta just 17 seconds back in 3rd. Konica Minolta anchor Hirokatsu Kurosaki actually overtook Honda anchor Masakazu Fujiwara, the marathon university record holder, but Fujiwara was able to fire back and retake the runner up position. Defending national champion Team Fujitsu was only 9th, nearly eight minutes behind Nissin Shokuhin despite a strong run from team leader and 2:06 marathoner Atsushi Fujita. Surprisingly, the top 7 runners on the 6...

http://mainichi.jp/area/aichi/news/20090801ddlk23050277000c.html translated by Brett Larner Over the weekend the Toyota Jidoshoki company gave its employees in Kariya, Aichi Prefecture the opportunity to wish its star runner Yuriko Kobayashi (20) well as she prepares to depart for Berlin to run in women's 5000 m at this year's World Championships. Over 1000 workers filled the banquet hall during their lunchbreak for the chance to see Kobayashi before her run. Women's track team advisor Masafumi Kato commented, "We are extremely happy that Ms. Kobayashi has made the national team again after running in last summer's Beijing Olympics. I'd like to ask you all to lend your voices in cheering her on to be among the top finishers." After receiving a bouquet of flowers from the company, Kobayashi told her supporters, "I want to put myself into position to be near the top. Thanks to all of you I will gain strength and do my best." Kobayashi graduated fro...