NYC CHAMPION TULU LEADS NAGOYA MARATHON FIELD
By David Monti with Ken Nakamura
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved (used by permission)

The 2009 ING New York City Marathon champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia, leads all entrants for the 30th edition of the Nagoya International Women's Marathon on Sunday, March 14, in Japan.

Tulu, 37, who prevailed last November in New York in a three-way battle against Ludmila Petrova of Russia and Christelle Daunay of France, has a personal best time of 2:23:30 set at the IAAF World Championships in Helsinki in 2005 where she finished fourth.  Tulu, one of the most decorated distance runners of all time, won the Olympic 10,000m title in both 1992 and 2000.

Her top rival will likely be Japan's Yuri Kano, who suffered a bad fall in New York last year and finished night, despite being severely bruised.  Kano has a personal best of 2:24:27 set in Tokyo in 2008.

The rest of the invited field is as follows:

Lyubov Denisova  (RUS) 2:25:18  2004 New York
Jiali Wang   (CHN) 2:26:34 2008 Zhengzhou
Tatiana Aryasova  (RUS) 2:29:09 2008 Los Angeles
Rose Kerubo Nyangacha  (KEN) 2:29:22 2007 Hamburg
Hiromi Ominami  2:23:26 2004 Berlin
Mika Okunaga 2:27:16 2009 Osaka
Yuko Machida 2:29:35 2009 Nagoya
Mayumi Fujita 2:29:56 2009 Nagoya
Akane Wakita 2:31:16 2009 Osaka
Yoko Miyauchi debut 1:09:51 2010 Marugame Half Marathon
Remi Nakazato debut 1:10:03 2009 Corporate team Half Marathon

Last year's winner, Yoshiko Fujinaga, was not listed on the start list. 

The course record is 2:22:19 set by Naoko Takahashi in 2000, the year she went on to win the Olympic gold medal in the marathon in Sydney.