Hiroki Wakabayashi crosses the finish line in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, as Aoyama Gakuin University completes the opening day of the two-day Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay in first place on Jan. 2, 2022. (Kyodo)

       TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Aoyama Gakuin University took the lead in the third of Sunday's five stages and never looked back, crossing the line first to win the outward half of the 98th Tokyo-Hakone collegiate ekiden road relay.

       Aoyama Gakuin freshman Aoi Ota moved his team up to first place some 18 kilometers into stage three and anchor Hiroki Wakabayashi stretched the lead to finish in 5 hours, 22 minutes, 6 seconds, giving his team a 2-minute, 37-second lead to take into the return leg of the prestigious event to be run on Monday.

       Teikyo University finished second and Komazawa University third, 3 minutes, 28 seconds behind Aoyama Gakuin.

       The two-day, round-trip race features 21 teams of university students from Kanto area schools.

       The outbound route is a 107.5 km course that starts in the Otemachi business district in Tokyo and finishes at Lake Ashinoko in Hakone, a popular tourist spot in the mountainous west of Kanagawa Prefecture.

       Last year, Komazawa University staged a dramatic final-leg comeback to win the overall title.

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