Komazawa University held a 30-second lead over Chuo University after the first day of the two-day Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay on Monday.
Five Komazawa runners covered the 107.5-kilometer course from Tokyo's Otemachi business district to the spa resort of Hakone in Kanagawa Prefecture in 5 hours, 23 minutes, 10 seconds.
Defending champion Aoyama Gakuin University placed third and will start Tuesday's return trip a little more than 2 minutes after Komazawa.
Komazawa will try to become the fifth team in history to sweep the three collegiate ekiden titles after winning the Izumo Ekiden in October and the national championship in November.
"I'm happy that my runners got their jobs done," Komazawa manager Hiroaki Oyagi said. "It was a neck-and-neck race. (Freshman and fifth-leg runner Takuma) Yamakawa says he is good at running on the mountainous leg. He ran well and met our expectations."
"I expect a tough return trip. We'll try to keep this momentum going tomorrow."
Chuo's Yamato Yoshii had the fastest second-leg time of 1 hour, 6 minutes, 22 seconds, outracing highly touted runners such as Komazawa's Ren Tazawa, who competed in the 10,000 meters at the world athletics championships in the U.S. state of Oregon in July.
Tokyo International University's Yegon Vincent pulled up his team from 12th to fourth in the fourth leg by clocking exactly 1 hour to break the Tokyo-Hakone ekiden's record for the third time. The university finished the first day in seventh place.
Roadside spectators were allowed for the first time in three years amid the continued spread of coronavirus infections.
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