Championship ekiden season wraps up Sunday with its last two big events. In Kitakyushu, the 35th Kitakyushu Women’s Invitational Ekiden brings together top high school, college and corporate league teams to race a short 27.2 km in five stages, with the longest leg split in two for the high school teams. University teams are absent this time except for one select team made up of women from the area, while the corporate league division has nine teams and the high school division 22 plus another select team.
2023 Queens Ekiden national champion Sekisui Kagaku is the top seed, its entry roster including members of its national title-winning lineup, Yuma Yamamoto, Rina Sasaki and Chikako Mori. Its closest competition is Queens 8th-placer Iwatani Sangyo, which has five of its six runners from the national championships entered including Kaede Kawamura, winner of the anchor stage at last weekend’s National Women’s Ekiden.
2023 National High School Ekiden winner Kamimura Gakuen H.S. leads the high school division and has its entire champion team on its Kitakyushu roster including sub-15 runner Caroline Kariba. Nationals 3rd-placer Ritsumeikan Uji H.S., 4th-placer Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S., 6th-placer Suma Gakuen H.S. and 9th-placer Ginga Gakuin H.S.are also in the race, with 7th-placer Chikushi Joshi Gakuen H.S. a late scratch. The race will be broadcast live on BS-TBS starting at 10:00 a.m. local time, and JRN will be on location in Kitakyushu. There might be streaming on the RKB Sports Live! Youtube channel.
As soon as Kitakyushu is done, the 29th National Men’s Ekiden goes off in Hiroshima with a live commercial-free national broadcast on NHK. Like the National Women’s Ekiden, the men’s race features teams from all 47 prefectures made up of each one’s best junior high school, high school, collegiate and corporate league runners, in the men’s case racing 48.0 km in seven stages of 3.0 to 13.0 km length.
When the event returned last year for its first post-pandemic edition Nagano took 1 second off its own CR from the last pre-pandemic edition in 2020 as it won for a record-setting ninth time in 2:17:10. It’s back with a strong lineup including high school 5000 m NR holder Hiroto Yoshioka (Juntendo Univ.), 27:30.69 10000 m runner Mebuki Suzuki (Komazawa Univ.), 1:01:50 half marathoner Taishi Ito (Waseda Univ.), and four members of 2023 National High School Ekiden CR break Saku Chosei H.S., Soma Nagahara, Shunpei Yamaguchi, Yamato Hamaguchi and Kazuma Shino.
2023 runner-up Saitama and 3rd-placer Tokyo are down on strength this year, but 4th-placer Chiba has a quality lineup led by 2024 Hakone Ekiden First Stage winner Kotaro Shinohara (Komazawa Univ.). Hakone Second Stage winner Asahi Kuroda (Aoyama Gakuin Univ.) and his younger brother Zen Kuroda (Tamano Konan H.S.) lead 5th-placer Okayama, while the Rakunan H.S.-heavy 6th-placer Kyoto is feeling the absence of the star of its 2023 team, Keita Sato (Komazawa Univ.) who is skipping the ekiden this year for altitude training in the U.S. in prep for February’s Millrose Games.
2023 7th-placer Hiroshima is led by another member of Hakone champ Aoyama Gakuin University, Ninth Stage winner Genta Kuramoto. 8th-placer Hyogo, a five-time winner, has a very decent lineup including 13:18.49 runner Yuta Bando (Fujitsu) and National High School Ekiden First Stage winner Sota Orita (Suma Gakuen H.S.). 9th-placer Miyagi saw its women pull of an anchor stage upset last weekend, but Hakone uphill Fifth Stage star Shunsuke Kikuchi (Daito Bunka Univ.) will have a tough time duplicating his role in scoring a top 10 overall finish for his team. 10th-placer Ibaraki is led by 2:06 marathoner Kyohei Hosoya and Yushin Akatsu of Hakone runner-up Komazawa University.
