Ekiden Stories No. 5: Who Let the Underdogs Out?
- jeremy kuhles
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
“In our first year, we’ll qualify for the national championships. By our tenth year, we’ll be the champions.”
When Daichi Kamino made that bold declaration at the unveiling event of the MABP Maverick Ekiden team back in April, the room filled with murmurs, followed by a wave of cheers, perhaps fueled more by the bubbles of Kirin beer than pure belief.
Building a corporate Ekiden team capable of competing at the highest level is hard work. Recruiting raw talent is one thing; creating the chemistry to fight for each other when the lactate floods the legs is another.
The best Ekiden teams are often more than the sum of their parts, and forging that kind of alchemy takes years.
But doubt the words of the third-generation God of the Mountain at your peril because last week, on November 3, Kamino-san’s band of mavericks stormed to a sixth-place finish in their tough regional qualifier, securing a ticket to the big dance, the New Year Ekiden national champs, on January 1, 2026.
It’s an extraordinary result, especially considering how steep the learning curve was in their first six-months together.
Welcome to the Ekiden underdog story of the year.
On Your Marks, Get Set, Prove...
The MABP Maverick team have been unusually open about their journey to the start line, sharing the highs and lows of building an Ekiden team through their social channels. It’s an unorthodox move in a sport where most teams prefer closed-door silence to public exposure.
So when Rei Yamahira lined up for the opening leg of the East Japan Corporate Ekiden, MABP's rapidly growing fanbase already knew the struggles that had brought the team here.
Rei's own 2025 had been a microcosm of the team’s: flashes of promise and moments of heartbreak. Over the summer, he’d crushed his 5 km PB, only to fall short in the qualifier that could have sent him to the World Championships.
And in the last few years, during his university days, unlucky circumstances had kept him from ever running the Hakone Ekiden, the stage where many of the other corporate rookies in the race had made their names.
So for Rei, and for MABP as a whole, this race was more than a debut. It was a chance to belong. To show that these mavericks, the ones who’d never quite fit the established script, had something to prove.
Paper-Thin Chances
To qualify for the New Year Ekiden, the most prestigious men’s corporate Ekiden in Japan, MABP needed to finish inside the top 13 out of 28 teams. So what were their actual chances of making the cut?
On paper, MABP’s average 5 km times placed them squarely in the middle of the field. Realistically, they were fighting for 12th or 13th place.
Of course, it’s hard to put a precise figure on it. But Kamino-san did, estimating their chances at “about fifty percent.” In his typically candid way, he explained that MABP sat right on the bubble: one of roughly a dozen teams fighting for the final qualifying spots. “We can’t be optimistic,” he said before the race. “It’ll be a battle fought on the borderline.”
The numbers backed that up. On paper, MABP’s average 5 km times placed them squarely in the middle of the field. Realistically, they were fighting for 12th or 13th place, the razor-thin edge that separated those who would move on to the New Year Ekiden from those who would fall just short.
And so while optimism may have been tempered before the race, you can imagine the rumblings of positivity that began to bubble up when Rei delivered a storming 13.1 km 1st-leg performance, handing over the tasuki in 4th place.
Free-Flowing, Yo-Yoing
Ask any Ekiden Kantoku (head coach) what the most important leg of an Ekiden is, and there’s a good chance they’ll say the first. The logic is simple: it sets the nagare — the flow — for everything that follows.
Thanks to Rei, MABP were flowing. What had seemed like little more than a puncher’s chance less than an hour earlier was suddenly starting to shapeshift into something real. But Ekiden racing is anything but predictable, especially for a new, mid-pack team trying to find its rhythm.
Those with a nervous disposition might want to look away now.
The middle stages revealed as much about MABP’s growing pains as their potential. Cheruiyot Festus Kiprono, who only arrived in Japan in March, is still adapting to life here, to the training, and to the demands of Ekiden racing. Kamino-san had expected him to finish with an individual time of “around 15th” on his leg, maybe a little higher.
In the end, Festus was 14th fastest, almost exactly what his coach predicted, and proof of both progress and how well Kamino-san knows his runners. He passed the tasuki with the team in 7th.
Things remained tense through the next couple of legs. Kensuke Horio drew on his strong marathon background to keep the pace honest and bring the team back up to 5th, while captain Rin Kitsuki dug in through a tough stretch, eventually handing over the tasuki in 8th.
The chance of qualifying for January 1st was still live, but far from secure. Those with a nervous disposition might want to look away now.
Second-Half Stability
Major Ekiden races tend to be point-to-point. For spectators, that means experiencing a brief blur of colour before the runners disappear into the distance. For races with less profile, however, they are usually on loops and this was the case for the East Japan Corporate Ekiden.
To be honest, loops offer a much better Ekiden experience for spectators as you get to see the runners multiple times, but it's also far more stressful if you have any skin in the game.
So here we are mid-race, with MABP sat in a precarious 8th place and with the pressure ratcheting up every 4.1 km circuit.
After the yo-yoing of the first half, the team badly needed stability.
Thankfully, Nao Kurihara, a 1500-metre specialist by trade and former baseball player, brought it. He’s been learning to stretch his range ever since joining MABP, trading the quick bursts of the track for the measured grind of longer distances. Over the summer, he clocked a 13:51 5 km PB and has been training for 10 km ever since, preparation that showed here as he steadied the team’s rhythm.
He passed to Hakone Ekiden winner Shota Onizuka, whose presence brought a quiet confidence to the group, before handing off to Yuta Nakagawa for the final leg.
Yuta, who ran more mileage than anyone on the team over the summer and shed four kilos in the process, carried into this race the sting of having been dropped from his university’s Hakone squad on New Year’s Eve.
That must have really hurt.
Kamino-san often spoke of his resolve during training, and perhaps it was fitting that it was Yuta who brought them home, vanquishing those painful memories and closing hard to secure a remarkable 6th-place finish and a place in the New Year Ekiden.
The Underdogs Are Out
The scenes after the race were pure elation. Pure jubilation. While the YouTube videos and social media posts offer some insight into the behind-the-scenes aspects, they don't fully capture the daily grind of the long-distance Ekiden runner. The stressful nature of this life.
Not to mention the investment. Mentally, physically and financially. But in the moment that Yuta crashed through that tape, all was made worthwhile.
With a place secured for January 1 and a start line alongside the best in the country, Kamino-san’s first major goal for the team has come to fruition. The interesting wrinkle to this is that in a YouTube interview, he admitted that in truth, he’d expected this to happen in year two, but couldn’t say that publicly, knowing the motivation for year one wouldn’t be the same.
The team has surpassed even the God of the Mountain's own high expectations. And who’s to say MABP won’t be champions in a decade or less?
Who who who who!
Text: Jeremy Kuhles
Images: Kentaro Tsuda (https://www.instagram.com/climb_ken/)
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