On January 3, 2024, the 100th Hakone Ekiden came to an end.
Aoyama Gakuin set a new record with a total time of 10 hours, 41 minutes and 25 seconds, winning the 100th Hakone Ekiden championship, returning to the throne for the first time in two years, completing the feat of seven championships in 10 years.
Against Komazawa University, the favorite to win the championship, Qingxue won 9 wins and 1 loss in 10 intervals, only 1 district was behind Komazawa, and although 1 district ranked 9th, it was only 35 seconds behind Komazawa.
As the soul of Qingxue, the former Jin supervisor, in his 20th year of personal coaching, he has completed the goal of "winning on the road and winning on the back road" set before the competition, and once again let the green mountains shine on the top of Hakone Mountain.
Thanks to the professionalism of the Hakone Steering Committee, we saw a lot of wonderful images, such as Seigaku VS Komazawa, the battle of the aces of each school in District 2, the difficult Ascending 5th Zone, the steep Descending 6th Ward, and so on. While the broadcast has been taken to the extreme, there will still be details that we don't understand or can't see.
In this "98 Run", we will introduce more stories about the 100th Hakone Ekiden!
Yuisho Yamamoto
The "Kinri Shisan Cup" was co-sponsored by Chairman Ariyoshi of the Kanto Student Athletics Federation and others, and an eight-member selection committee decided the winners. At the end of last year, it was decided that "interval new" would be the selection criterion for the winners.
Yui Yamamoto (4th grade), a player from the 5th district of Josai University, was naturally selected as the winner of the "Golden Chestnut 43 Cup" of the conference.
On the premise that there was no objection to the election of Yamamoto Yuisho, the former superintendent put forward his personal opinion.
Ota Kensei
He asked if he could also run for Aoyama Gakuin District 3 (3rd year) as one of the candidates.
He believes that Ota won the zone prize in Zone 3 with a time of 59 minutes and 47 seconds, becoming the first Japanese to break the one-hour mark in Zone 3, and being able to match Vincent's interval record of 59 minutes and 25 seconds set in this zone, laying the foundation for victory.
General Assembly resolution, which will then be adopted and adjusted. The closing ceremony, which was scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. on 3 January, was postponed by approximately 30 minutes due to discussions at the oversight meeting.
Hakone Ekiden Zone 5 Records:
■93~100 times (20.8km) 1:09:14 (3.20/km) Yui Yamamoto
■91~92 times (23.2km) 1:16:15 (3.17/km) Kanno Daichi (Sandaime Sanjin)
■82~90 times (23.4km) 1:16:39 (3.17/km) Ryuji Kashiwahara (Nidaime Yamagami)
■76~81回（20.9km）1:09:12（3.19/km）今井正人（初代山神）
Josai University Yamamoto Yuisho, 1 hour 09 minutes 15 seconds to set a new record in the 5 districts, won the "Golden Chestnut 43 Cup", and won the 5 district awards for 2 consecutive years.
Yamamoto's pre-race goal was 1:09:12 set by Masato Imai of Juntendo University in 2005 (the course was changed in 93 times, and the interval record was based on 93 races), which was only 3 seconds short.
As a graduator, he said that he hopes to participate in the marathon event at the Olympic Games and inherit the vision of "from Hakone Ekiden to the world" advocated by Mr. Shizo Kanaya.
5th place in District 1 Tokai Dai, Hyoto Juda
In the 100th Hakone Ekiden, Tokai University ranked 11th and Kokushikan University finished the same time, both with a time of 11:01:52.
On the first day, Kokushikan University ranked 11th and Tokai University ranked 16th. Although there is a time gap in the next day, the two teams start at the same time, and the order of crossing the line does not represent the actual ranking, only the finishing time is the same.
According to the rules of the Hakone Ekiden competition, "in the case that the order of crossing does not represent the actual ranking, the ranking of the institutions with the same score is determined by the number of people who rank at the top of the range." ”
First of all, the comparison is based on the number of interval rewards, if the number is the same or not, the number of students in the second place of the interval is compared, and so on, and the institutions with the largest number of students are ranked first.
Tokai University, Hyodo Juda, 5th in District 1, and Kokushikan University, Yamamoto Reiga, 7th in District 5. As a result, Tokai University is ranked 11th and Kokushikan is ranked 12th.
Similar events occurred in Juntendo and Nippon Sports University (5th and 6th) in the 40th (1964), Nippon Sports University and Takushoku University (15th and 16th) in the 90th (2015), and Yamanashi Gakuin University and Meiji University (17th and 18th) in the 93rd (2017).
Wear a mourning badge on the left chest
At Hosei University, in order to commemorate the deceased team member Shota Takahashi, the team members all wore mourning badges and shouted the slogan "Run for Shota", and Tomoo Tsubata supervised Shota Takahashi's clothes and shoes into the operation car, and ran with Shota and 16 team members to pay tribute to his friends in heaven.
In the end, Hosei University ranked 9th in the road, and the complex road performed well, winning 6th place. Among them, Kazuma Takeda, a player in District 6, won the interval award with a time of 58 minutes and 02 seconds, ranking 6th in the history.
In August last year, Shota Takahashi suffered from leg swelling and thought that he would be cured after 2 or 3 weeks of treatment, but his condition took a turn for the worse about 10 days after he was hospitalized, and he finally died of acute kidney failure at the age of 19.
Daito Bunka University, which ranked first in the Hakone qualifiers, finished 10th in the 100th Hakone Ekiden with a time of 11:00:42. This is the first time in nine years that Daito Bunka University has been granted seed rights since Hakone Ekiden in 2015.
The players in the 5th and 6th districts of the road played well, and the Junsuke Kikuchi section of the 5th district ranked 4th, helping the Dadong Daxiang Road to rank 8th.
Although Yuki Satake in District 6 finished 4th in the range, Bid Wangiru (foreign) in District 8 unexpectedly ranked first from the bottom, but Akira Ohtani in District 9 and Masato Saki in District 10 were in full swing to finish 9th and 7th in their respective sections, securing the hard-won seed rights for Daito Bunka University.
The purpose of the "early departure" of the double road is to shorten the time of traffic control and avoid traffic jams. This rule leads to a mismatch between the "apparent ranking" and the "actual ranking" that we see on television.
The rules for "early departure" of the Hakone Ekiden Complex Road are as follows:
At the start of the Otemachi Complex Road, the teams that start in the first place in the previous course and are within 10 minutes of the difference in the first place start in order of time difference. Teams that are less than 10 minutes away from the 1st place finish will start early.
In the 100th trip to Hakone Ekiden this year, in addition to the top 7 teams on the road, the remaining 8~23 teams set off ahead of schedule at the same time, creating the largest number of people in Hakone history.
For example, in the figure, D is large, E is large, and F is large. D University will reach the finish line within 10 minutes after the first place A University reaches the end of the path, so the re-path will start with the same time difference (9 minutes and 50 seconds later).
E and F were separated from the first place by more than 10 minutes, so they started at the same time at 8:10 a.m., 10 minutes after the start of the A major. Although D is 1 minute away from E and 3 minutes from F on the way, E and F start at the same time just 10 seconds after D starts.
In addition, there is a "early departure" rule for each section. This also leads to the phenomenon of "broken belt" often in the multi-lane race, especially in the 9~10 area.
Ward 9 Yamanashi Gakuin Hiraya Mitsuki wears a yellow and white striped cord Ward 9 Yamanashi Gakuin Hirae Yotsuki wears a yellow and white striped cord
This year, Yamanashi Gakuin became the first team to break the belt in Ward 8~9, and in Ward 9~10, Chuo Gakuin, Juntendo University, and Surugadai University broke the belt again.
The team with the "broken belt" will wear the yellow and white striped cords prepared by the organizing committee and continue to run and pass (if the belts are broken in the 4~5 districts of the road and the 9~10 districts of the compound road, they can continue to wear the school's cords).
Therefore, the ranking of each team will be determined based on the total time of various factors such as the time difference between the two routes, the departure time difference of the two routes, whether or not they start early at the transfer station, and the time difference between the arrival at the end of Otemachi.
In Hakone Ekiden's broadcasts, we often see hydrators running with their teammates, saying words of encouragement to their teammates and handing them drinks to motivate them to reach their full potential and achieve better results, which has developed into a unique feature of Hakone.
The water replenisher is generally a member of the team of each institution or a relevant person of the school, and the supervisor who takes the operating vehicle cannot get off the bus to supply water. According to the rules, the hydrator and the team members can walk within 50 meters and can only take water and energy drinks prepared by the organizer.
With the exception of Zone 1 and Zone 6, each section is located at 10 km and 15 km (10 km and 14.4 km in Zone 9), and the water replenishment point in Zone 5 is 7.1k and 15.8 km due to the course.
Hydrators tend to be good partners, but there are also members who regret not being selected for the 16-man list. This year, in Hakone, the Chudai Yoshiju brothers and the Chuo father and son handed water to become the highlight.
Chung-Ang University, 14 of the 16-man squad were hit by the flu before the game, and the ranking fell to 13th, failing to get seeding.
Ace Yoshii Yamato will also graduate next year, but his younger brother Junkyo Yoshii has done well this year, winning the interval prize in Hakone Ward 7 with a time of 1:02:27, and is 3rd in the history.
Although the two brothers did not complete the handover of the strap, in the last 3 kilometers of District 7, the elder brother Yoshii Daiwa rehydrated his younger brother Yoshiju Jungong, and after the two ran side by side and talked to each other, Yoshiju Jungong raised his left hand in response to his brother, entered the final sprint stage, and finally successfully won the interval prize, which will also become a good memory for them in Hakone.
Chuo Gakuin University District 4 Kuroiwa Yuzen, the water supply at 15km is served by his father, Kuroiwa Hiroki.
His father, Hiroki Kuroiwa, was also from the track and field department of Chuo Gakuin University, but he failed to realize his Hakone dream back then. The selection of his son Kuroiwa Yuzen allowed him to realize his dream of stepping on the Hakone Circuit and being in the same frame as his son.
Kuroiwa was also inspired by his father to finish 6th in the range.
The organizer, the Kanto Federation of Students, announced that the total number of visitors on the roadside on January 2 and January 3 was about 980,000.
1.2 million in 2018, 1.24 million in 2019, 1.21 million in 2020, 180,000 in 2021, 600,000 in 2022, 910,000 in 2023 and 980,000 in 2024.
Even before the pandemic, the number of spectators along the route had already exceeded the one million mark, with about 1.24 million in 2019. During the 2021 pandemic, in order to prevent the epidemic, the organizers called for not watching the game on the side of the road, and set up forbidden areas on key road sections.
This year is the first time that Hakone has not been subject to any restrictions since the end of the pandemic, and although it has increased from 910,000 people last time, it is still not at the highest level.
Hakone Ekiden is a long-distance relay race founded by the father of the Japanese marathon, Ikari Shizo, who returned to Japan after feeling the gap in strength with the world.
At that time, he envisioned a future that would train world-class long-distance runners from Hakone to the world. Now that Hakone is in his 100th year, the course record is being broken continuously, and the Kanto region has fulfilled his long-cherished wish to provide Japan with a steady stream of long-distance runners.
Every school, every team member in each Hakone, is moving towards a higher, faster and stronger goal, accompanied by beautiful and painful memories, but the harvest is the fruit that covers the entire spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Although there are regrets, but this is the main theme that runs through most people Hakone, some people are treated as trump cards in the first year, some people only realize their dreams in the fourth year, and even more people fail to nominate in college for 4 years, but it is Hakone that is not perfect!