A few days ago, Japan's Hakone Ekiden Qualifier, which is comparable to the "Olympic Games", began. The event is contested by 21 teams, each with 10 players on the field, 10 stages of relay, each running a distance of about one and a half horses.
Many domestic media will report on the Hakone Ekiden event, which is a very distinctive race in the running circle.
Don't hide from everyone, Miss Dong shed tears while checking the information transmitted by Hakone Eki - it was really too hot.
01.
Why hakone Ekiden?
For The Japanese people, Hakone Ekiden is a national event.
In Japan, its popularity and attention even exceed the Olympic Games, World Championships and other international competitions, and compete with the finals of the Japanese Professional Baseball League. Because "Hakone Ekiden" is held on the 2nd and 3rd of the first month of each year, watching Hakone Ekiden has become a Japanese New Year custom.
Hakone Ekiden was founded in 1920 by The Father of Marathon in Japan, Kinari Shichizo and others.
The main purpose of Hakone Ekiden is to "cultivate world-class players".
This competition is a "sports event" that belongs to university students in the Kanto region of Japan, and it still belongs to Japanese university students today.
An event can be widely recognized by everyone, and it can certainly not be done for a long time by publicity and hype alone, and it must have its own unique charm.
The biggest attraction of Hakone Ekiden is "cruelty", and most international marathons are actually "flat running", but the cruel point of Hakone Ekiden is that it needs to go through the steep mountain road of Hakone.
In particular, the upper and lower mountain sections of the 5th and 6th sections, the altitude difference is more than 860 meters, and the temperature fluctuations caused by the altitude are also very large, and overall, the runners who specialize in running between the mountains are a very cruel "dramatic turning point" that is the easiest to open up the difference. ”
Therefore, the big god runners who show their skills in these two intervals have the reputation of "mountain gods". Being able to participate in the event and win the championship is considered a high honor.
The special game time also makes this game "cruel".
In January of each year, the temperature in the Kanto region of Japan does not exceed 10 degrees, and in the mountainous areas, the temperature will plummet to 0 degrees, and the cruelty is a double test of the players' physical fitness and mental will.
Therefore, as the competition progresses, due to various uncertainties, the first place will change after each stage, and the existence of this unpredictability has become the focus of each competition.
The 42.195 km of the marathon can be said to be "a small witch" in front of the 217.1 km of "Hakone Ekiden", which is why the Japanese people describe this sports event as "the devil's game".
02.
Hakone's participation in the competition is extremely demanding!
And the conditions for participating in Hakone Ekiden are very strict, you must have obtained the official race record of completing the 5 km record in 17 minutes to be eligible to apply for Hakone Ekiden. (Later adjusted to 5 km in 16 minutes and 30 seconds or 10 km in 34 minutes).
Runners can say in the comments section what level this entry qualification is?
It is said that if you want to reach this level, for ordinary people, it is necessary to practice marathon running for 3-5 years every day in a scientific practice to basically reach the standard, which is very difficult, basically can be said to be "athlete level".
03.
Blood! The sportsmanship that makes people cry
Since it is a relay race, it is necessary to have a relay item.
However, unlike the baton of ordinary races, each participant of Hakone Ekiden runs his own course and passes a cross-body shoulder strap equivalent to a baton, called "襷" (jǔたすき) in Japanese, to his teammates in the next section.
For the contestants, the "jǔ" is a sacred object, symbolizing the unity of the team, the heart-to-heart connection and bond between the entire participating team, which can be understood as the existence of the "Olympic flame".
When racing, the "jǔ" (jǔ) must be hung obliquely from the shoulder to the other side of the armpit, and when handing over, the "jǔ" must be personally handed over to the opponent's hand, and cannot be passed in the form of throwing out, which is a great disrespect to the entire team and even the event.
If there is such a "quick success" thrown out and the person who loses the sportsmanship will directly lose the qualification for the future competition.
The "jǔ" represents the honor and tradition of each school, as well as the responsibility of each player and the spiritual pillar of the competition.
The "jǔ" (jǔ) used in each school will have the signatures of all the players, supervisors, coaches, squatters, dormitory managers and other people related to the team in the team to indicate team combat.
A "jǔ" with the school's name on it binds all the team members together, and one team member's mistake is equivalent to the total annihilation of the army.
But Hakone has a cruel rule that you can only wait 10 minutes at the latest, and after 10 minutes, the next runner must run the next stage.
Therefore, when it is time to run in advance, the runners will get the "jǔ" prepared by the organizers in advance, a school belt without everyone's signature, no sweat from teammates, and cold.
The fact that a runner cannot receive the relay belt of the previous runner means that the relay belt with the name of the school cannot reach the end with everyone's hopes, which is undoubtedly a great shame for the runners.
If the relay belt cannot be passed to the next runner during the race, the runners will always fall to their knees and cry, which makes the audience feel very emotional.
In Hakone Ekiden, the most important thing for the participating teams is not the school ranking, nor the individual score, but whether the "jǔ" (襷) (jǔ) can be successfully delivered to the finish line. In order to pass the school belt from the beginning to the end, the runners will also run forward desperately during the competition.
In 2019, Hakone Ekiden had only 30 seconds to start the race, and yasuhei Arai, a fourth-year student at Daito Bunka University in District 1, tripped and fell heavily to the ground, spraining his left ankle.
After struggling to get up, he could only limp forward, but he could still catch up with the first group! (At the time, the group's pace slowed down to 3:06/km).) It was not until only 5 kilometers from the finish line that the new well fell out of the first group.
As 12 other teams completed the handover, Arai's figure still did not appear in the field of vision. Fortunately, with only 40 seconds left before closing time, Arai finally reached the finish line in great pain.
After a smooth handover, he finally fell heavily at the junction. Surprisingly, the 21.3 km long Zone 1 was finally completed at 1:11:15, with an average pace of 3:20!
04.
legend! "Rotten boy becomes the king" of the Qingxue University
Miss Tomo really likes a photo from the legendary ace school of Hakone Ekiden, Seigakudai. This is a photo taken when they won the Hakone Ekiden three consecutive championships. The smiles on everyone's faces were moving.
If we say, Hakone Ekiden represents the spirit of perseverance and hard work of a country. Then the story of Qingxue University comes from personal struggle and perseverance.
Aoyama Gakuin University has a long history – it was founded in 1874 and upgraded to a university in 1949. But in fact, for a long time, this university with excellent academic achievements has been frustrated in Hakone Ekiden.
However, with the addition of one person, the Youth University of Science and Technology in Hakone has suddenly emerged, and even gradually dominated. The first credit for the success of the school was a young coach hired by the school in 2004: Hara Susumu, who was 36 years old at the time.
Image source/Love Burns
The coach has never participated in Hakone Ekiden, nor has he graduated from a participating university, but he has surprisingly put forward the grand goal of "Hakone Ekiden playing for 3 years, joining the seed team (top 10) in 5 years, and winning the championship in 10 years". At that time, this could be said to be a fool's dream, because many people knew that the strength of the Aogaku University could not produce Hakone Ekiden.
In the 2006 Hakone Qualifiers, the third year of yuan Jin's tenure, Seigaku university suffered a crushing defeat and only ranked 16th, and the school even planned to abolish the long-distance running department and stop playing! And Yuan Jin has repeatedly recruited new students to the high school that is rich in Eki chuan talents, and the reason is that "your school is good or not, but Hakone Eki can't pass the line."
In desperation, Yuan Jin had to recruit team members from the second- and third-tier high schools in his hometown, and then make every effort to build them into an elite team that can cultivate both inside and outside.
Through a special coaching method that emphasizes happy running. So that the team members not only continue to improve their running ability, but also the whole team is full of positive energy and morale is high. After 11 years of hard work, Yuan Jin's original dream finally became a reality.
So after encountering many difficulties, Yuan Jin led qingxue university to create what kind of team that has always been strong?
To give an example, at the 2015 Kanto University Auditions, Seigakudai ran one of the most eye-catching team performances in the history of Japanese athletics: 8 people scored 29 points in 10,000 meters, of which 5 were for the first time and 7 were PB.
With the addition of 3 people, Kanno, Starling and Akiyama Yufei, there are as many as 11 masters who score 29 points in the 10,000 meters of Aogaku University.
What is the concept of 29 points in 10,000 meters? Find a frame of reference: In the men's 10,000-meter final of the China Athletics Championships held in Suzhou in September 2015, the number of Chinese runners who could score 29 points was... zero!
In January 2020, in the Hakone Ekiden arena, the road was the first, setting a new road record, and ranking first in the overall ranking, showing the style of Wang Erqingxue.
Yuya Yoshida, the vice captain of the Seigaku-dai, broke the record of 19 years of Akira Aizawa being worshipped as a miracle, and also established an almost unshakable advantage for Seigaku.
Hakone Ekiden is only a college student, and he has not played in the past three years due to the abundance of young scholars.
"Although I have never been involved in hakone eki passing as a regular player, even on the sidelines I will still devote myself to helping the team win in other ways."
And he played in his last year of college, not only ended his youth perfectly, but also brought very bright results to the University of Youth Studies.
Yoshida Yu, the vice captain of the University of Aogaku
05.
Inheritance! This is the strength of a nation
As a traditional tournament that can almost be compared with Poma, Hakone Ekiden has a history of 100 years, and it must be a great thing that a competition can last for nearly 100 years.
First of all, this reflects the Japanese people's love and inheritance of road running, there is no deep love for marathon sports from the heart, it is difficult to have the faith and courage to persevere to the end, which is also an important reason for the continuous emergence of a large number of outstanding runners in Japan.
At the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Marathon, Japan, which was under-financial means at the time, sent only two athletes to compete, and Kinkuri Shizo was one of the two people who carried the hopes of the whole country.
Unfortunately, the ambitious Golden Chestnut Four-Three, in the hot game, fought until he fell unconscious, and a local farmer picked him up and brought him back to the house. By the time he woke up, it was already the next day.
With great expectations on his back, he didn't even finish the game. He wrote in his diary:
"It was the most memorable day of my life. Failure is the mother of success. In the face of ridicule from others, respond with laughter. Just as the soft ground will eventually become stronger after the rain falls, one day I will erase this shame. ”
After returning to China, in order to make his country go global in the long-distance running project, Jin LiSi3 struggled to shout: "Need to be crushed like a bone."
In 1920, with a vision for the future of Japan's long-distance running world, he initiated the Hakone Ekiden. The purpose is to "cultivate world-class players". It is from this moment that the nation gradually becomes stronger in the marathon.
Japan has a population of 130 million, but the number of marathon events has always ranked among the top 10 in the world.
In 2015, the number of marathon runners in Japan surpassed that of the United States for the first time, and the total population of the United States, known as the world's largest running country, is more than double that of Japan, which shows the high proportion of Japanese people participating in marathon sports.
In the past 100 years, Japan has indeed become a veritable long-distance running power, as Kanori Shizo hoped.
In terms of results, Japan once dominated the marathon stage, and 15 of the top 17 results in the 1966 world rankings were created by Japanese male athletes.
In terms of culture and atmosphere, it goes without saying that a Kenyan runner who was recruited to fight in Japan said: "The people here love to run, it's really amazing. They love kenya more than any other country. ”
From the 1920 Antwerp Olympics to the 2012 London Olympics, Hakone Ekiden contributed 69 athletes to Japan.
Japan's fanatical running culture, represented by Hakone Ekiden, is unique around the world, screening out generations of runners and sending excellent marathon talents to the Japanese marathon.
Finally, I would like to end with a passage from "Strong Wind Blowing":
"Many people think that they are only two words away from success, and when he tries hard, he can catch up with the gods." This is not just ignorance, but also arrogance. Success is not so cheap. Success requires effort, but success is more than effort. ”
End
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