Official 2026 Hakone Ekiden Live Discussion Thread + Free link to "the best sports broadcast in the world"

I love this stuff. Reminds me of 2020 when Takato Suzuki (also of AGU) was on course record pace in the third leg, but Vincent Yegon passed him like he was standing still. Suzuki just laughed and cheered him on. (Probably easier to do when you know the guy's team isn't going to beat yours.)

While this was obviously an all-time great effort, I'm not buying these crazy conversions to a flat half. I think it's more likely that this guy is superhumanly gifted on hills and the “2.5 second slowdown per 10 foot elevation gain” doesn’t apply to him.

Im an American university coach and happened to be vacationing in Japan during the relay this year. We actually by chance pulled into our Air B n B in Hakone the afternoon of the second day. It was so fun following the legs vía live streaming and through the tracking feature. As we were traveling I’d notice random people streaming the race on their phones. We had the opportunity to visit the Ekiden relay museum which is at the Day-1 finish. The US could learn a lot from the Japanese on making the sport more popular. Presentation is one. The coverage was incredible.. as the new star was rolling up his competitors the screen showed his last 5 (individual) kilometer splits next to the splits of the guy who he was catching. Team competitions also are huge imho when it comes to generating interest. Im looking forward to following this event and the crazy deep Japanese talent pool in the coming years.

Yes, U.S. TV broadcasters could certainly learn a lot from the Japanese broadcasters' coverage, not only of this race but of all the major ekidens. For one thing, all of the commentators are true experts. They include former athletes like Toshihiko Seko -- winner of the London and Chicago marathons and 2-time Boston and 4-time Fukuoka champ -- and Naoko Takahashi, marathon gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics and the first woman to run sub-2:20.

And, as you mentioned, the constant updates on the athletes' splits and how many people an athlete has passed during a given leg add tremendously to the drama.

That's one of the main reasons that Kuroda's run up the mountain had viewers on the edge of their seats throughout. Would Aoyama Gakuin's coach Susumu Hara's prediction that Kuroda would pull of the win if he started 3:30 or less behind the leader prove to be true (he started 3:24 behind)? How well would Kuroda handle the mountain on his first attempt at it?

As it turned out, Kuroda made his coach look like a genius.

BTW, I live less than 1 km from the coastal section of the course, so I jogged over to watch the first three runners pass by during on third leg (first day) of the race. Local fans were lined up two or three deep on both sides of road for as far as I could see in both directions. This really is a wonderful country to call home if you love distance running.

It kind of depends on how we define "equivalent." My understanding of JK's conversion is that he's largely predicting how you should take your knowledge of your flat course fitness and apply it to running a course on hills. The physiologically based conversions are just comparing oxygen consumption, and it's entirely possible that people can record higher values running uphill because there's simply more muscular involvement (similar to how XC skiers always have astronomical VO2max values--it depends as much on how much oxygen your muscles can pull out of your blood as it does on how much oxygen your heart can move). That's probably why you get numbers like 55 minutes from those, which I agree isn't plausible.

Anyway, I don't think that Kuroda could necessarily have dropped a 57 minute half on the day he ran up the mountain. On the other hand, I think if you put peak fitness Kiplimo in that uphill race against Kuroda, it's a toss-up who wins, even assuming Kiplimo has done hill work.

The thing about Hakone isn't just that you've got a bunch of 60-62 minute guys competing. It's also hands-down the most important race of a Japanese runner's life, so they are absolutely as prepared as they can possibly be, and they turn themselves inside out racing. If someone takes 2-minutes off a course record that has been assaulted by multiple 60-flat guys, all of whom treated it as not just the "A" race of the season, but perhaps of their careers, I'm pretty comfortable saying it's as "good" a performance as a 57-minute half.

Just as background, in an interview BEFORE the race, Aoyama Gakuin coach Hara called Kuroda the best athlete who has ever competed in the Hakone Ekiden in the race's 105-year history. He didn't explain how he came to that conclusion, but I thought that was quite a statement, especially when you consider what foreign athletes such as Vincent Yegon have done.