Welcome to Ekiden: UK's most-gruelling race as Olympic stars beaten and winners disqualified

For almost seven hours, 10 of Oxford University’s best runners, including the 2016 US Olympic marathoner Jared Ward, led a 114.8km path from Windsor to Reading and back.

Then, moments after celebrating, the bad news was broken to them. They had been disqualified for an illegal sash handover during the second UK Ekiden and the trophy was being handed to Japan’s Ritzumeikan University, who had flown in to compete at a gruelling event that flips the loneliness of a long distance runner on its head.

In Japan, Ekiden is the biggest of deals - think along the lines of the Grand National or Super Bowl, an event where folk not ordinarily in the sport gather around the TV and everyone is suddenly an expert.

Its concept is simple - a relay where instead of batons runners hand over sashes, known as tasuki. And now a group spearheaded by Anna Dingley and with support from a handful of high-profile sponsors is looking to embed the concept in Britain.

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Last Friday’s event brought 16 universities and 15 corporate teams together on a punishing course that veered through all sorts of terrain and stunning scenery, nominally following the Thames path.

Trailing in the wake of Oxford, Ritzumeikan and the other serious competitors up front was MirrorSport, part of a media team that ended up doing OK - finishing sixth among the corporate teams and ahead of an Asics collective that featured Eilish McColgan and triathlon star Beth Potter - Bragging rights were dimmed by both being there for a bit of fun on behalf of their sponsor and their team also featuring the company’s 68-year-old chief executive.

And even for a seasoned runner the 12.8km fourth leg through woodlands and rugged countryside just south of Henley-on-Thames was an almighty challenge.

From the burn of running up a steep hill at Harpsden woods, to plodding through firmed up cow poo via a field where the trail disappears among four-foot high grass – it is rather different to the tarmac of East London.

The 29c heat didn’t make things easier either. Yet veering from loving it to hating it, this will remain memorable for a long time to come. In a sport where almost always your own performance stands in isolation, to work as a team is not just novel but a possible pointer of things to come.

And with the country - indeed much of the world - in the middle of a boom fuelled by younger people joining run clubs (in south west London they are the 2025 version of speed dating, apparently) there may be no better time for Ekiden to take off.

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