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From the start it wasn't to be. In hot and sunny conditions Tokai's Ryohei Sakaguchi led the 8.0 First Stage in 23:16, AGU's Ryuya Kajitani only 8th in 23:54. At least three runners were staggering as they came into the exchange zone, a sign of the tough conditions, and one, Gifu Keizai University's Taiki Takekuma, collapsed around 100 m from the exchange zone, unable to stand or even crawl and knocking GKU out of the race at its very start. Another runner, Ryoya Goya of Hosei University, was a DNF on the Fourth Stage, making it two teams out of the race. That does happen at the season-ending Hakone Ekiden where stage lengths average around a half marathon, but with an average stage length of 7.5 km at Izumo it was unheard of.
AGU's second man, sub-62 half marathoner Kazuki Tamura, made up over half of the deficit with a course record 15:47 for his his 5.8 km stage win to put AGU into 2nd just behind Kanagawa University, and on the next stage his fellow fourth-year Yuta Shimoda overtook Tokai's Junnosuke Matsuo in the final few hundred meters of the stage to give AGU its only lead of the day, 5 seconds ahead of Tokai with Toyo University sandwiched in between. It wasn't the lead AGU needed to have a chance, and the outcome of the second half was all but certain.
Ranked at the top of his stage, Tokai's #2 man Shota Onizuka put 14 seconds on AGU's Yuji Onoda and win the 6.2 km Fourth Stage in 18:12. Fifth runner Shuto Mikami opened up another 23 seconds over his 6.4 km stage, winning it in 19:15. Going by 10000 m PB Tokai anchor Hayato Seki, the team's strongest runner, had an advantage of over 30 seconds over AGU anchor Taisei Hashizume, and with a lead of over 30 seconds at his disposal it would have been a major upset for Seki to get run down. Not to say it didn't almost happen.
By about 2 km into the 10.2 km anchor stage Hashizume had closed to within 20 seconds of Seki, over half the gap gone with most of the race to come and Seki looking uncharacteristically sluggish. Last year Tokai lost to AGU on the anchor stage, and for a moment everyone held their breath as it looked like a repeat performance might be in the works. But rounding the corner in front of Izumi Taishi shrine onto a steep downhill Seki went into action, his stride smoothing out as he sped up and began to pull away from Hashizume.
By halfway through the stage Hashizume was barely visible behind him, and from there Seki pushed on to break the tape in 2:11:59 and secure Tokai its first Izumo win since 2007. With AGU head coach Susumu Hara having transformed university men's distance running with a systematic and businesslike approach, Morozumi's ascension from top high school coach to top university coach marked another transition point in the scene's ongoing development.
