People :
The “mountain specialist” who captivated television viewers in the Hakone Ekiden Race at New Year’s
Mr. Ryota Komano

Mr. Ryota Komano Born in 1986 in Saitama Prefecture. 4th-year student majoring in English literature in the School of Education. Belongs to the seminar of Professor Kumiko Murata. Graduated from Waseda Jitsugyo High School. Placed 1st in the 3,000m steeplechase in the Kanto Intercollegiate Tournament in 2007, and achieved the 5th-leg victory in the 2008 Hakone Ekiden Relay Race. Captain of the Ekiden Team. His hobbies are shopping and watching movies. After graduating, he plans to work for JR East.

In this year’s two-day Hakone Ekiden Race, a round trip marathon relay between central Tokyo and Hakone, in Kanagawa Prefecture, Mr. Komano passed 5 runners from other universities on the fifth and last leg of the outward route, marking the fastest time for this fifth leg. He made it to the finish line as the top runner. He is the captain of the Waseda Ekiden Team, which belongs to the track and field club, and which took the first-day lead for the first time in 12 years. In the final result, Waseda ranked 2nd for the entire race.

Mr. Komano competed in the national championships for the 1,500m and the 3,000m track races when he was in junior high school. At the same time, he also competed enthusiastically in swimming competitions, and placed as high as 8th in backstroke at the Saitama Prefectural Tournament during his second year of junior high. Although he performed well in both track-and-field and swimming, he entered Waseda Jitsugyo's High School with the strong desire to “concentrate on track and field, in order to get into Waseda University and run the Hakone Ekiden.” He made steady progress in high school, and achieved his long-sought goal of entering Waseda University.

After entering the School of Education at Waseda, he studied hard in order to obtain a certificate for teaching English. As for athletics, he was chosen as a first-year student to be the runner on the fifth leg of the outward route, but in the second year, he could not run because of injury. This time, then, it was the third time he had experienced the fifth leg of the hill climbs in Hakone. On receiving the best time leg award this year, he commented that he felt he would be able to make it “because I was feeling very confident from the starting line.”

He says that he could hear the spectators cheering for him along the course of the relay. “I saw my friends from my English major holding up a big banner and cheering for me two kilometers before the finish line. I realized that they had come to cheer for me this year as well, and told myself that I had to win,” he explains. It goes without saying that the encouragement and support from the spectators gave the runners a lot of strength.

Mr. Komano reflects on the hardships he faced as captain, trying to get the team together as one. “In order to win in a race, I had to say some harsh words to the members of the team. Some might have objected to my style when I was trying to heighten the tension on the team, but somebody has to be the hatchet man,” he says. There were actually some injured runners before this year’s Hakone Ekiden, but even during times when the team’s morale was low, he tried to make them “concentrate on what they could do.” As a result, the mood within the team changed and everyone began to feel that they could make it.

“Whereas most track and field races are competitions in which individuals compete, the process of passing the “tasuki” (cloth sash) to the next runner in the Ekiden relay race brings about a special feeling of achievement which cannot be experienced when competing alone,” he says. Although he has obtained a teacher’s license in order to pursue the same sense of achievement, he will work for JR East after graduating and continue running in the track and field world. His dream is to compete in national races representing the company. He has two options: continuing to work at JR East or to become a teacher at Waseda Jitsugyo's High School so that he can train talented runners and send them on to Waseda University. He also wants to study for English qualifications such as TOEIC, if time permits. Having successfully balanced academic work with sports, and approached everything with sincerity, Mr. Komano’s eyes reflect his sense of strong determination.