japan running news

On July 21 the Uniqlo women's team announced that 2-time Olympic 10000 m runner Yuka Takashima had joined its lineup as of July 16. Born in Yamaguchi in 1998, Takashima anchored Okayama's Kojokan H.S. to its first-ever National High School Ekiden win in 2005. After graduating she joined the Denso corporate team, playing a key role in its 3-straight National Corporate Women's Ekiden titles. In 2015 she ran the 10000 m at the 2015 Beijing World Championships. In the spring of 2016 Takashima transferred to the Shiseido corporate team, where she made the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics team in the 10000 m. She played an important role for the team in its ekidens, and in 2022 anchored Shiseido to its first national title in 16 years. In 2023 she was 2nd in the 10000 m National Championships, securing her place on her 2nd Olympic team at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Takashima's PBs are 15:26.33 for 5000 m, 30:57.26 for 10000 m, and 2:26:13 for the marathon. In March this year T...

5th last year, Edion led almost start to finish to win its first-ever national title at the Queens Ekiden corporate women's national championship race Sunday in Sendai. Its lead-off runner Kana Mizumoto opened up a 16-second lead that it held until the 4th leg, when the talented Caroline Kariba from 2024 winner Japan Post ran down Edion's Saya Nakajima . It's hard to fault Nakajima, who was still the fastest Japanese woman on that leg, and in any case Edion's 5th runner Ai Hosoda , 6th at August's Sydney Marathon, caught Japan Post's Kotoka Ota late in the 10.0 km leg to put Edion out front again by 7 seconds. Both Edion anchor Miho Hiraoka and Japan Post's Mao Kogure ran identical times for the 6.795 km 6th leg, 21:24, Hiraoka bringing Edion in to its first-ever win in 2:13:50. It had to have been frustrating for Kogure, who just couldn't close the gap and had to accept 2nd in 2:13:57. 2023 winner Sekisui Kagaku was almost a minute back in 3rd...

31 corporate women's teams were in Fukuoka this weekend to go for the 16 remaining spots at November's Queens Ekiden, the corporate women's national championship race. 19-year-old China Nakagawa was a revelation on the opening leg as she took down the leadoff runners from the bigger teams to put Hitachi out front, but on the next stage steepler Manami Nishiyama put Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo out front with a stage-winning 10:57 for 3.6 km. A brilliant run from Nanaka Izawa (Starts) on the first of the race's two long stages interrupted Mitsui Sumitomo's lead, but when Mitsui Sumitomo's Tabitha Njeri outkicked Starts' Esther Wambui it was all Mitsui the rest of the way. Stage-winning runs from last two runners Wakana Kabasawa and Anna Matsuda were enough to give Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo the win in 2:15:53, 48 seconds under the old course record set by Shiseido in 2021 when Kabasawa was a member of that team. Starts ended up a distant 2nd in 2:18:04, with Ten...

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...

On May 13 the Uniqlo women's corporate team announced that it had appointed Aoyama Gakuin University head coach Susumu Hara as special advisor. Hara became head coach at AGU in 2004, turning from a team that had been absent from the Hakone Ekiden for decades into a winning program by 2015. In the 11 editions since its first win in 2015, AGU has won Hakone 8 times under Hara's leadership. In 2019 he became a professor in AGU's Department of Global Studies, and in 2024 he was named chair of the KGRR collegiate federation's ekiden committee. Along with Hara, Uniqlo announced that Ann Quinn , known for her success with wheelchair tennis star and People's Honor Award recipient Shingo Kunieda , has been hired as mental coach for the women's team. The Uniqlo women's team was founded in 1997. It won last October's Princess Ekiden , going on to finish 9th at the Queens Ekiden national championships in November. Shigeo Hasegawa became head coach in April this...

Sunday is the first big race of championship ekiden season, the Queens Ekiden in Sendai, the season-ending national championship for corporate women. 24 teams race 42.195 km in 6 legs, with the top 8 scoring places for 2025. TBS' live nationwide broadcast starts at 11:50, with multi-camera streaming on Youtube above. Last year Sekisui Kagaku won by almost a minute and a half, and with Paris Olympian Yuma Yamamoto , 2023 World Championships marathoner Sayaka Sato on its entry list and collegiate 1500 m record holder Mizuki Michishita having come on board this season it looks like a contender for another win. But last year's runner-up Japan Post got a big boost this season with the addition of its first non-Japanese member, two-time double 1500 m and 3000 m high school champion Caroline Kariba . The Queens Ekiden limits non-Japanese athletes to a 3.8 km leg, so it'd be tough for Kariba to bridge a 1:25 gap by herself with that little ground to work with. But what she can...

A day after the qualifying race for January's Hakone Ekiden , the corporate leagues held their qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden national championship. 30 teams raced the 6-stage, 42.195 km Princess Ekiden to try for the 16 spots left alongside the 8 auto-qualifiers from last year's Queens Ekiden. After a slow start Uniqlo moved up to take the win thanks to a stage win from Paris Olympian Yume Goto on the 3.6 km Second Stage, a good run from 4th runner Yumi Yoshikawa to move into 3rd, and a big run from new recruit Dolphine Omare to run down Edion and Otsuka Seiyaku for 1st. 33 seconds up on Edion at the start of the 6.695 km anchor stage, Uniqlo had a scare from Olympian Wakana Kabasawa who started for Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo 50 seconds back in 5th. Kabasawa turned in a stage-winning run and got to within 5 seconds of Uniqlo anchor Ayaka Kato with 1 km to go, but Kato heard her coming and rallied to hang on for the win in 2:19:16. Mitsui Sumitomo was nex...

Sunday is the Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden, the season-ending national championship race for corporate women's teams. The top 8 placers at last year's Queens Ekiden, Sekisui Kagaku , Japan Post , Panasonic , Shiseido , Daihatsu , Daiichi Seimei , Tenmaya and Iwatani Sangyo , auto-qualified for 2024, leaving the rest of the league's teams to line up in Fukuoka at the Princess Ekiden in hopes of joining them. 30 teams will compete for 16 places at the Queens Ekiden, each with a team of 6 running a total of 42.195 km. TBS is broadcasting the race live starting at 11:50, with streaming on Youtube. 16th at Queens last year, Kyudenko has scratched from Sunday's race due to athlete injuries preventing them from having enough people ready to run. 22nd at Queens, Yamada Holdings is also out because it couldn't field 6 runners, one reason being the transfer of one of its star runners, Sakiho Tsutsui , to Universal Entertai...

The Princess Ekiden , the official qualifying race for November's Queens Ekiden national corporate women's championships, happens Sunday in rural Fukuoka. 31 teams of 6 women will be racing 42.195 km in pursuit of 16 places at Queens alongside the top tier of podium placers from last year's national championships. TBS will be streaming the race live on Youtube starting at 12:10 p.m., and if you've got a VPN you should be all set. Live results will be posted here . There's a general sense that Japanese women aren't where they used to be, but counter to that trend are a lot of new women's ekiden teams trying to get off the ground. Along with some of the long-established powers like past national champions Universal Entertainment , Tenmaya and Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo , there are relatively young teams like Nitori , Senko and Tokyo Metro trying to qualify for the first time, and newcomers like Bears Camellia making their debuts. Next year expect to see at leas...

The number of Japanese athletes going overseas continues to inch back toward pre-pandemic levels, with people racing in Europe and North America this weekend. Three were at the Adizero: Road to Records promotional event at Adidas world HQ in Germany Saturday, 19-year-old Koku Gakuin University teammates Kiyoto Hirabayashi and Ayumu Yamamoto , and marathoner Mao Uesugi (Starts). Despite low-hanging official road 5 km NR of only 13:55 and 15:52, both times regularly beaten by high schoolers in ekiden racing, both Yamamoto and Uesugi fell far short. Yamamoto, who ran 1:00:43 for the half marathon in February, ran only 14:34 in the men's 5 km, while Uesugi, 2:22:29 at January's Osaka International Women's Marathon, ran 16:12 in the women's 5 km. Hirabayashi was at about the same level in the men's half marathon, running 1:03:33. Two women from the Uniqlo corporate team were at Stanford University's Payton Jordan Invitational in the U.S.A., Mai Shoji in the 5...

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...

http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=spo_30&k=2011042100608 translated by Brett Larner Team Uniqlo announced this week that longtime Team Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo head coach Hideo Suzuki , 59, would be taking over as head coach at Uniqlo effective May 1. Suzuki led Chiba's Funabashi H.S. girls' ekiden team to two national championships before becoming head coach at Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo, which he led until 2009. Under his leadership Mitsui became the best team in the country, winning countless National Corporate Women's Ekiden titles. Individual team members also became among Japan's best, including two-time Olympian and double World Championships marathon medalist Reiko Tosa and 10000 m national record holder and former marathon national record holder Yoko Shibui . Speaking of his goals for the Uniqlo team, Suzuki commented, "I want to help the team members move even one step closer toward becoming athletes competitve at the global level. I want to help them build on ...