Final 12 months Saku Chosei received in 2:01:00 for the 7-stage, 42.195 km course with a group that included 6 runners with 5000 m bests below 14 minutes, a top-class time for highschool runners. All of the group members demonstrated their power, every serving to the group obtain the win. Out of the ten runners on Saku Chosei’s entry roster at this 12 months’s Nationals 5 have 5000 m bests within the 13-minute vary, however regardless that that’s barely lower than final 12 months there isn’t any doubt concerning the group’s expertise degree. Its purpose is to be the strongest, not simply the quickest.
3 members of final 12 months’s profitable group are again this season. Expectations are excessive for the group’s two finest, captain Yamato Hamaguchi and vice-captain Tetsu Sasaki. In the course of the open apply session each usually aspect ran side-by-side. If one went to the entrance, on the subsequent lap the opposite would take a flip main, a powerful present of mindfulness towards one another even throughout coaching.
Final 12 months Hamaguchi handed off within the lead on the Fourth Stage, working the 2nd-fastest time within the general discipline. Within the 12 months since then he is performed nicely, profitable the Nationwide Sports activities Pageant 5000 m and making the Japanese group for the U20 World Championships. This will likely be his third time working the Nationwide Excessive College Ekiden. “2 years in the past we have been 2nd and final 12 months we received, however I wasn’t glad with how I ran,” he mentioned. “This 12 months I need to win my stage. I am actually assured about my final kick.”
Sasaki broke the Fifth Stage course file final 12 months by 8 seconds, masking the hilly 3.0 km stage in 8:14. At this 12 months’s Nationwide Excessive College Monitor and Subject Championships he received the 3000 m steeplechase and went on to hitch Hamaguchi on the U20 World Championships. He’s anticipated to kind the core of this 12 months’s group at Nationals alongside Hamaguchi. “Profitable the general title final 12 months and getting the Fifth Stage CR was the most effective,” he mentioned. “I am actually grateful to have the possibility to go for a repeat win and I need to ship the most effective outcomes once more this time.”
On the entrance to the college is a stone monument to the group’s historical past, a marker of the extent of custom the ekiden group has constructed. Saku Chosei received its first title in 2008 on the 59th Nationwide Excessive College Ekiden. Its anchor that point was 3-time Olympian Suguru Osako. Different nationwide group members have adopted, and there is a sense of pleasure and accountability that comes from sporting the group package working on the streets of Kyoto. That stress is intense.
Saku Chosei is coach by Masaru Takamizawa, himself a graduate of the college. Together with 2017 and final 12 months he has led it to 2 nationwide victories. “Profitable back-to-back titles is one thing particular, however we’re not doing something particular in coaching,” he mentioned about this season. “We’re simply protecting on doing what we at all times do. This 12 months is extra about competing than about time. Final 12 months we had a group with velocity, however this time is a group with power. We hope to dwell as much as the hopes of everybody cheering for us and supporting us.” In the event that they succeed, a 2nd-straight win would add a brand new piece of historical past to the highschool ekiden.
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translated and edited by Brett Larner
