Two of the five Komazawa University runners won their legs Monday to lead their team to its fourth straight overall title in the Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay.
Naoki Shibata crosses the finish line in first place Monday as Komazawa University clinched the Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay.
Komazawa, which began the day 30 seconds after first-day winner Tokai University, moved in front in the seventh leg and went on to win the two-day, 217.9-km round-trip race between Tokyo and the hot-springs resort town of Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Komazawa clocked 11 hours, 3 minutes, 48 seconds over 10 legs in the 81st edition of the annual New Year race as it won the title for the fifth time in the team's history.
Nippon Sport Science University finished runnerup 3:35 behind and Nihon University came third a further 25 seconds back.
Chuo University and Juntendo University followed in fourth and fifth, respectively, while Tokai slumped to sixth.
In Monday's return trip from Lake Ashinoko to Tokyo's Otemachi business district, Komazawa runner Satoru Kasuya overtook the Tokai runner as he produced the fastest time in the seventh leg.
Yuya Shiokawa then set a record in the penultimate leg to stretch the lead for Komazawa, which also won the 109.9-km second-day race in 5:31:07 in a contest featuring 20 teams from various parts of the Kanto region.