Three of our top women are set to compete as invited athletes in next month’s Yokohama Women’s Marathon, with the full invited field announced this week by race organizers. This year’s race will be the first of three Olympic selection races for Japanese women, the other two being Osaka in January and Nagoya in March.
Leading the Japanese and international field on November 20th will be reigning Yokohama champion Yoshimi Ozaki (Daiichi Life Insurance/adidas). The 2009 Berlin World Championships silver medalist, Yoshimi won the last edition of Yokohama in a course record 2:23:56 and will be competing with the other Japanese women for a berth on next year’s Japanese Olympic team. Great Britain’s Louise Damen (adidas/Winchester and District AC) is also in the hunt for an Olympic spot in the UK after her very fine marathon debut of 2:30:00 at London this Spring. And out of South Africa, Rene Kalmer (Nedbank/adidas) looks primed for a big breakthrough after running the second-fastest half-marathon of her career (71:46) at the Great North Run in September. Yokohama’s November weather should be much more conducive to fast times than were the temps in Prague and the Daegu WC this year for Rene’s first two runs at the distance.
As a note, Yokohama invitee Chika Horie and her Sakura AC teammates just this morning wrapped up a long altitude training camp in Boulder, Colorado, and flew back to Japan with coach Yoshio Koide.
Invited Field (as reported this week by Race Results Weekly)
Invited Japanese Women –
Yoshimi Ozaki 2:23:30 PB 2008 Tokyo
Chika Horie 2:26:11 2002 Hokkaido
Kaoru Nagao 2:26:58 2011 Yokohama (Feb)
Mika Okunaga 2:27:16 2009 Osaka
Ryoko Kizaki 2:27:34 2010 Osaka
Mayumi Fujita 2:29:36 2010 Nagoya
Kaori Yoshida 2:29:45 2010 Chicago
Invited International Women –
Mara Yamauchi (GBR) 2:23:12 PB 2009 London
Salina Kosgei (KEN) 2:23:22 2006 Berlin
Robe Guta (ETH) 2:24:35 2006 Hamburg
Alevtina Ivanova (RUS) 2:26:38 2008 Nagano
Kateryna Stetsenko (UKR) 2:27:51 2010 Dublin
Louise Damen (GBR) 2:30:00 2011 London
Rene Kalmer (RSA) 2:34:47 2011 Praha
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