The Sports Festival Exam Explained

In normal high schools, a Sports Festival is a fun day where you run some races, eat snacks with your friends, and take home a cheap plastic medal. But at the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School? A Sports Festival is a brutal battlefield.

Taking place right at the start of Year 1, Semester 2 (and the beginning of anime Season 2), the Sports Festival proves that Classroom of the Elite can make a simple game of tug of war feel like a life or death situation.

If you loved the mind games of the Zodiac Exam, this test brings all of that manipulation out into the bright sunshine. Today, we are breaking down the rules, the dirty tactics, and the most legendary race in the entire series!

The Setup: Red Team vs. White Team

For the first time since the school year started, the classes were forced to team up. The school divided everyone into two massive teams:

• The Red Team: Class A and Class D

• The White Team: Class B and Class C

This meant Class D had to cooperate with the elite students of Class A. Meanwhile, Honami Ichinose (Class B) was forced to work with the ruthless dictator Kakeru Ryuen (Class C).

The festival featured two types of games:

1. Universal Participation Events: Things like the 100-meter dash where every single student had to compete.

2. Recommended Participation Events: Games like the three-legged race or the scavenger hunt where classes could choose their best athletes to compete for extra points.

Every class had to create a "Participation Roster"—a secret list of who was playing in which game. This roster was supposed to be highly confidential. But in Class D, a traitor was lurking in the shadows.

The Rewards and Penalties Breakdown

Just like the Island and Zodiac exams, the Sports Festival had massive consequences. You weren't just playing for pride; you were playing for your rank and your money.

Here is what was on the line for the students:

The Prize	The Rewards	The Penalties
Team Results (Red vs. White)	• Winning Team: +150 Class Points	• Losing Team: -150 Class Points
Class Rankings (1st to 4th)	• 1st Place Class: +50 Class Points • 2nd Place Class: +0 Class Points	• 3rd Place Class: -50 Class Points • 4th Place Class: -100 Class Points
Individual Student Rankings	• Top 3 Students: Massive Private Point bonuses (up to 100,000 PP) or bonus points on their next written test!	• Bottom 10 Students: Lose Private Points.

Because the top athletes could win bonus points for their next written math or history test, this was a massive opportunity for the physically strong (but academically struggling) students—like Ken Sudou—to save themselves from future expulsions.

The Sabotage

Because Class C was at a physical disadvantage, Kakeru Ryuen decided to play dirty. He didn't care about running fast; he cared about breaking his enemies mentally and physically.

First, Ryuen made a secret deal with Kikyo Kushida, the two-faced traitor in Class D. Kushida hates Suzune Horikita and wants her expelled. So, Kushida secretly leaked Class D's entire Participation Roster to Ryuen!

Because Ryuen knew exactly who was playing in every single game, he completely rigged the matchups.

• He sent his fastest runners to compete against Class D’s slowest runners to steal easy points.

• He sent big, aggressive students to target Ken Sudou in team games to make Sudou angry.

• Worst of all, he ordered his classmates to physically "accidentally" trip and injure Horikita.

By the middle of the festival, Horikita was badly hurt, and Sudou was so angry that he punched someone and ran away, threatening to quit the festival entirely. Class D was completely falling apart.

Character Growth

Up until this point in the series, Horikita thought she could do everything alone. She looked down on her classmates, especially the hot headed Sudou.

But Ayanokoji refused to fix the problem for her. He forced Horikita to deal with the disaster herself. Injured and exhausted, Horikita tracked Sudou down. Instead of yelling at him like she normally would, she showed true leadership. She swallowed her pride, apologized, and convinced him that he was the only one who could lead Class D to victory.

This was a massive turning point for both characters. Sudou returned to the field calmer and more focused, and Horikita finally started acting like a real leader instead of an arrogant loner.

The Climax

Even though Sudou came back, Class D was still losing badly. It all came down to the final event: The 1200-meter Relay Race.

Sudou ran an amazing leg of the race, but the baton was eventually passed to Ayanokoji. For the entire school year, Ayanokoji had pretended to be perfectly average. He intentionally got exactly 50% on every test and hid in the background.

But in this race, he was matched up against the most powerful student in the school: Manabu Horikita (Suzune's older brother and the Student Council President).

Ayanokoji decided to stop holding back. When he grabbed the baton, he took off like a rocket. The entire stadium went dead silent. Everyone—including the teachers, Ryuen, and the top students in Class A—watched in pure shock as the "average, lazy kid" from Class D sprinted at Olympic speeds, running neck-and-neck with the legendary Student Council President.

It is easily one of the most hype, jaw-dropping moments in the entire anime!

The Final Outcomes

Because Ayanokoji and Manabu were so fast, they actually tied for first place in their leg of the race. However, because of all the early sabotage from Class C, the Red Team (Class A and D) ended up losing the festival to the White Team (Class B and C).

Even worse, Class D came in last place overall, losing 100 Class Points.

But it wasn't a total defeat.

1. Sudou proved he was the best athlete in the school.

2. Horikita grew into a real leader.

3. Ayanokoji secretly planted a recorder to blackmail Ryuen, stopping him from getting Horikita expelled.

Most importantly, the whole school finally realized that Kiyotaka Ayanokoji was hiding a terrifying amount of talent. The "average" student was suddenly the biggest mystery on campus.