japan running news

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...

2026 Hakone Ekiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University held a press conference Apr. 4 at its Sagamihara campus announcing that it was adding a women's ekiden team to its track and field program. In its first year the team has only 2 members, Nodoka Ashida of Ritsumeikan Uji H.S. , and Kairi Ikeno of Suma Gakuen H.S . The team's head coach will be Susumu Hara , who coached the AGU men to their second Hakone threepeat this year and had a hand in the GMO corporate team's first-ever New Year Ekiden win. At the press conference he talked about the reasons for launching a women's team, and the harsh realities facing women's track and field. AGU is the undisputed leader in the evolution of the university men's ekiden circuit, but adding a women's team represents a new challenge. Hara cited 3 objectives in expanding the AGU program: "creating an environment where female athletes can balance competition and life events," "expanding the opportunities...

The winner of the first Marathon Grand Championships Olympic trials race is starting down a new road leading back to the Hakone Ekiden. Set to retire at the end of March, 2021 Tokyo Olympics marathon team member Shogo Nakamura (33, Fujitsu) will take over as head coach at Meiji Gakuin University in April in a quest for its first-ever Hakone appearance. According to a source involved in the situation, Nakamura has been hired to lead Meiji Gakuin to Hakone by the 2028-29 academic year. Nakamura's career as an athlete garnered great respect, especially his serious attitude toward competition and the patience and endurance he developed through marathon running. Still on the cusp of retirement, Nakamura is unproven as a leader. But last year he entered the Waseda University Graduate School of Sport Science with the aim of becoming a professional coach. While balancing his academic work with his racing he studied top sports management at the same place Susumu Hara , head coach of 9-t...

  On Jan. 8 Aoyama Gakuin University held a victory celebration at the school's Aoyama Campus in Shibuya, Tokyo for its win at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden, the 9th win for AGU in the last 12 years and its second threepeat. AGU's 4th runner at Hakone, Kyosuke Hiramatsu (3rd yr.) took 3rd on his leg and set up Day One anchor Asahi Kuroda (4th yr.) to run down the leader on the uphill Fifth Stage and take the Day One win. At the celebration he revealed that he had been suffering from a rare disorder, acquired idiopathic generalized anhidrosis. This disorder, which the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare estimates to afflict only 100 to 200 people nationwide, primarily men aged 10 to 30, impairs the function of sweat glands throughout the body. As a result those affected have difficulty regulating body temperature and are highly susceptible to heatstroke. The cause is unknown and no established treatment exists, but according to the National Intractable Disease Information Center ...

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...

On Mar. 25 the KGRR , organizers of the Hakone Ekiden, announced the start time for mid-October's 102nd Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai qualifying half marathon in Tachikawa, Tokyo will be changed from its traditional starting time of 9:35 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. as a measure against rising temperatures. The KGRR explained, "We have explored what options we have to maximize the safety of our athletes from the effects of global warming. With that in mind we have decided to move the start time earlier to reduce the risk from heat." At the Yosenkai half marathon schools may run up to 12 team members, with their first 10 finishers scoring based on their combined finish times. With places at the world's biggest road race on the line competition is fierce and the young student athletes push their bodies and minds to their absolute limits. Last year's race on Oct. 19 had unseasonably hot weather that turned into a battle of attrition. At the 9:35 a.m. start it was 23.2˚, rising to summ...

Sena Minawatari , a 3rd-year at Hakone Ekiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University  who revealed in January that he had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma in November, passed away on Feb. 19. He had just turned 21 two weeks earlier. Following the wishes of his family, Aoyama Gakuin announced the news on its team website on Feb. 21. Titled "In honor of the departure of our dear friend," the announcement read: "We are saddened to announce that Sena Minawatari, part of our team for last year's Hakone Ekiden and this season's National University Ekiden, has passed away. He was an indispensable part of our team, and we would like to express our deepest gratitude and respect for his passion and the achievements it produced. We feel grief and loss at this sudden departure, and we will carry the memories we have with him in our hearts as we continue to move forward. He fought this illness until the very end, and we ask that his memory be looked upon with warmth of heart...

After running a debut and collegiate record of 2:06:07 at Sunday's Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon as the last race of his career, Aoyama Gakuin University 4th-year Hiroki Wakabayashi said on Feb. 3 that he would consider keeping it going for the half year it would take if he is named to the Japanese team for September's Tokyo World Championships. Wakabayashi plans to retire and has already accepted a job at the Nihon Seimei insurance company. "If I'm named to the team I'll have to discuss it with the company," he said cautiously. Wakabayashi's time in Beppu-Oita was the 7th-fastest ever by a Japanese man and cleared the 2:06:30 Tokyo World Championships standard, positioning him as a candidate for the team. Having already accepted a job to start after his graduation next month, immediately post-race he said, "I ran this thinking of it as the last race of my career. I think I was able to run this kind of time because I knew it was the end of the road...

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...

The biggest road race of the year is days away, with the Hakone Ekiden entering its second century on Jan. 2 and 3. 20 university teams and one select team race 217.1 km in 10 legs from central Tokyo to the mountains near Mt. Fuji and back, with Nippon TV broadcasting the whole thing live and nationwide to an audience in the tens of millions. TVer is streaming Day One here starting at 7:50 a.m. local time on Jan. 2, and Day Two here at 7:50 a.m. again. If you've got a VPN you should be good to go. JRN will be on-site at the Day One finish line and Day Two start line and will be doing some coverage on @JRNLive . At October's Izumo Ekiden and November's National University Ekiden Koku Gakuin University , Komazawa University and Aoyama Gakuin University went 1-2-3, and the main question at Hakone is whether it'll be the same order again. Komazawa is the heavyweight legacy school of the three, with 8 wins and 18 top 3 finishes at Hakone in the last 25 years under ex...

The Kanto Student Athletics Federation (KGRR), organizers of the Hakone Ekiden, announced this week that as of April 1 they have changed their legal status from a volunteer organization to an incorporated foundation. Having served as the KGRR's chairperson for eight years since his appointment in 2016, Masahiro Ariyoshi , 76, has stepped down to be replaced by Yasushi Ueda , 68, a 1984 Olympian in the men's triple jump. Former Yamanashi Gakuin University  head coach  Masahito Ueda , 65, stepped down as chair of the KGRR ekiden committee after serving for ten years. Susumu Hara , 57, head coach of course record-breaking 2024 Hakone Ekiden winner Aoyama Gakuin University , was named KGRR executive director and will succeed Ueda as ekiden committee chair. Tokai University  head coach Hayashi Morozumi , 57, will serve as ekiden committee vice-chair. Other committee members include Seiji Kushibe  (Josai University, 52), Toshiyuki Sakai  (Toyo University, 47), Tomoo ...

"This year is an Olympic year, but is the Hakone Ekiden really helping Japanese athletics develop?" "Students are not running the Hakone Ekiden because of the Olympics!" This exchange happened in a video on the ABEMA News Youtube channel between comedian Shigeo Takahashi of comedy duo Savannah, and Susumu Hara , head coach of Aoyama Gakuin University which had won the Hakone Ekiden for the seventh time three weeks earlier. Speaking with tremendous energy, Hara went on: "If you think about it rationally, fundamentally the only people who would say they are interested in the Olympics are Japanese people. Japanese are the ones who place so much importance on the Olympics. If you go to the U.S., they have football and basketball. Our press conference after winning this time was an Olympic-level event. There were 50 or 60 news media companies there, a hundred of them, and all the reporters were clamoring for quotes. That has nothing to do with the Olympics. The H...

The important thing to ask yourself is, "What comes next?" On January 10th the organizers of the Feb. 4 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon announced their field for this year's race. Among the general division entrants is Aoi Ota , the Aoyama Gakuin University 3rd-year who ran down leader Komazawa University on the Hakone Ekiden's Third Stage to play a critical role in Aoyama Gakuin's upset win. Head coach Susumu Hara has floated the possibility of Ota running 2:04 at Beppu-Oita. This was the 7th Hakone title in the last ten years for AGU, but what's strange is that not a single member of those champion teams has gone on to make a Japanese national team at the two Olympics or five World Championships that have happened since AGU's era began. One recent example is Shungo Yokota , now of the JR Higashi Corporate Team . Just before his graduation from AGU last year, Yokota was 4th overall and 2nd Japanese at the 2023 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon in a collegiat...

On Jan. 11 Asahi Kuroda , winner of the highly competitive Second Stage for overall champion Aoyama Gakuin University at the 100th Hakone Ekiden on Jan. 2, announced that his next race will be the Jan. 21 National Men's Ekiden in Hiroshima. At the seven-stage, 48.0 km race he said he hopes to be on a stage adjacent to the one his younger brother Zen Kuroda of Tamano Mitsunan H.S. runs so that they can hand off the tasuki together. Two stages at the National Men's Ekiden are for collegiate and corporate league runners, three are reserved for high schoolers, and two for junior high school athletes. Representing Okayama prefecture, the older Kuroda brother is scheduled to run the 8.5 km Third Stage, with the younger brother, who will enter the Aoyama Gakuin team in April, is set to run the 5.0 km Fourth Stage. "This will be the first time we've run an ekiden together since I was in my third year of high school and he was in his first," said Asahi. "I'm ...

The New Year Ekiden corporate men's national championships are coming up in just over 24 hours, but there's a limit to how much you can do and we want to focus what energy's left on the Hakone Ekiden's 100th running on Jan. 2 and 3. A quick preview of the Jan. 1 New Year Ekiden is here , and if you've got a VPN you'll be able to watch streaming of TBS' broadcast here . If you're still on Twitter follow our live coverage on @JRNLive and @tri_chaser . Good luck to Honda in its shot at a third-straight win, and to everyone else running there. Nippon TV is broadcasting both days of the Hakone Ekiden , with a pre-race show at 7:00 a.m. and the start at 8:00 a.m. each day. Use a VPN to watch streaming of Day One here , and of Day Two here . We'll be covering the race on  @JRNLive and on-site from the Day One finish and Day Two start at Lake Ashi. The story at this year's Hakone Ekiden: Can Komazawa University become the first school to win all t...

The Tango University Ekiden , the major ekiden for schools in the Kansai Region, will hold its 85th edition on Nov. 18. In 2013 the race returned to the Tango area of northern Kyoto after 9 years being held on the shores of Lake Biwa. To commemorate the event's landmark anniversary, 6-time Hakone Ekiden champion Aoyama Gakuin University will make a special appearance in the Tango University Ekiden this year without counting in its results. AGU head coach Susumu Hara had approached the organizers in the Kansai collegiate athletics federation some time ago about his team running, and with the 85th anniversary on the horizon plans were finalized. In order to cover AGU's travel from Tokyo and other costs for its athletes and staff, local government officials conducted a "government crowdfunding" scheme in which locals could donate a portion of their taxes. The scheme has been used in the last three years to fund a TV broadcast of the race, and this time the target of ¥1...

The Hakone Ekiden is almost here. The 99th running of Japan’s biggest sporting event happens Jan. 2-3, 21 collegiate relay teams of ten men running around a half marathon distance each from downtown Tokyo to Lake Ashi in the mountains near Mt. Fuji and back. All of it and more is broadcast live domestically starting at 7:00 a.m. by Nihon TV to tens of millions of fans and streamed on their Hakone site  starting at 7:50, with domestic streaming of both Day One and Day Two  also on TVer. There’s no official international streaming, but get yourself a VPN or subscribe to one of the online services that makes it possible to watch Japanese TV and you’re in. JRN will cover the entire race both days again this year on @JRNLive , so buy us a coffee and help make it possible . With course record wins at the season’s first two major ekidens, Izumo and Nationals , Komazawa University is the heavy favorite. The triple crown of major university ekiden wins is just about the only thing...