Nagoya Women’s Marathon 2025 announces invited athletes list

The Nagoya Women’s Marathon announced today the top elite athletes who will compete in the 14th edition of the world’s largest women’s marathon to be held on Sunday, March 9, 2025. The leading stars in the field are Sheila Chepkirui of Kenya (PB 2:17:29), 2024 TCS New York City Marathon champion, Ruti Aga of Ethiopia (2:18:09), 2019 Tokyo Marathon champion, and Eunice Chebichii Chumba of Bahrain (2:20:02), 2023 Asian Games champion and last year's runner-up in Nagoya.  

Other notable international competitors in the field include Isobel Batt-Doyle of Australia, Natasha Wodak of Canada, Yuyu Xia of China, Fabienne Königstein of Germany, 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, Rika Kaseda (2:21:55), who represented the country in the marathon at the 2023 World Championships in Athletics, and Rino Goshima (0:30:53 for 10000m, 1:08:03 for HM), 2024 Paris Olympian in the 10000m 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. All finishers will receive an exclusive crystal tumbler from French luxury brand Baccarat from this year, with the design unveiled at the Marathon Expo on the day before the race. The special tumbler will be not only presented to the runners who crossed the finish line in Nagoya, but it will also be sent to all the finishers of the virtual race, the Nagoya Women’s Online Marathon 2025, which is currently held until March 31, 2025. 

• View complete list of competitors in the Nagoya Women’s Marathon 2025 Elite Field
• View press images (for use under the copyright credit to Nagoya Women's Marathon)

About the Nagoya Women's Marathon

The Nagoya Women's Marathon is the largest women's marathon in the world, certified by Guinness World Records with 21,915 participants in 2018, held annually in March in Nagoya City, Japan. It was launched on March 11, 2012, with 13,114 participants, reformed from the Nagoya International Women's Marathon, the elite-only women's race known as the qualifying trial that had sent off many Japanese star athletes to the international competitions, including two Olympic gold medalists Naoko Takahashi and Mizuki Noguchi. It holds the World Athletics Platinum Label status and has now grown to an event of 20,000 participants. For playing a significant role in the increase of the women runner population in Japan, the race was awarded the International Olympic Committee Women and Sport Achievement Diploma in 2019, after receiving the Japan Olympic Committee Women and Sport Award in 2017.