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...
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