NYC Marathon champion Sheila Chepkirui to headline Nagoya Marathon

Chepkirui will be racing her first marathon since toasting to victory in the Big Apple with a time of 2:24.35 last November, claiming her first world marathon major win as she led Hellen Obiri and Vivian Cheruiyot to a 1-2-3 finish for Kenya.

Chepkirui, 33, will line up against 2019 Tokyo Marathon champion Ruti Aga of Ethiopia and 2023 Asian Games champion and last year’s runner-up in Nagoya Eunice Chebichii Chumba of Bahrain, among other elite athletes.

Other notable international competitors in the field include Isobel Batt-Doyle of Australia, Natasha Wodak of Canada, Yuyu Xia of China, Germany’s Fabienne Königstein and Natosha Rogers of USA.

The athletes who will join the competitive racing from Japan are Hitomi Niiya (2:19:24), the third-fastest Japanese woman of all time who will be competing in Nagoya for the first time in 16 years since 2009 and Rika Kaseda (2:21:55), who represented the country in the marathon at the 2023 World Championships in Athletics.

Others are 2024 Paris Olympian in the 10000m, Rino Goshima, who will be making a marathon debut.

As this event will be the final opportunity to secure a ticket for the 2025 World Athletics Championships Tokyo in September, a particularly fast-paced race between veteran and young athletes is expected.

The Nagoya Women’s Marathon is not only one of the world’s most competitive races as a World Athletics Platinum Label road race, but it is also the world’s largest women’s marathon where 20,000 women runners will take part.