Chuo University placed 8th overall at the 88th Tokyo to Hakone round-trip college 'Ekiden' long-distance road relay race.

Chuo started the second-half - the Hakone to Tokyo section - of the race in 12th place. However, our team got back on track, thanks to the running of Shuhei Shirota, who finished 3rd in the 6th section. Junichi Shioya ran hard and finished 2nd in final section, securing a seed for Chuo University in the next race.

Our university will be able to participate in the 89th Ekiden next year, and we have now maintained our 28th consecutive year of being seeded.

Thank you very much to those who cheered and supported Chuo University.

The supporters cheering and waving the Chuo University flag at many places along the road encouraged the runners to keep going.

We are truly grateful.

Overall Place: 8th; 11:11:17
(First Half: 12th; 05:37:06/Second Half: 6th; 05:34:11)

1st Section: Yu Nishijima-8th place (01:02:57)
2nd Section: Yuki Munakata-4th place (01:08:44)
3rd Section: Akihiro Atsumi-7th place (01:03:47)
4th Section: Shota Shinjo-7th (00:55:56)
5th Section: Keita Iguchi-18th (01:25:42)
6th Section: Shuhei Shirota-3rd (00:59:34)
7th Section: Hiroki Sugawa-9th (01:04:50)
8th Section: Kota Shinjo-8th (01:06:36)
9th Section: Yuji Osuda-14th (01:12:38)
10th Section: Junichi Shioya-2nd (01:10:33)

At the meeting held after the finish, many people congratulated the runners for their efforts.

We are also grateful for the more than 300 messages of support that we received.

We will continue to accept messages for runners and Chuo University. We look forward to collecting the messages together - they will encourage our team as they prepare for the 89th Ekiden.

• Messages of support