Olympic silver medalist Catherine Ndereba of Kenya heads the list of invitees to the Osaka International Women's Marathon next month, race organizers said Wednesday.
Ndereba, who finished second to Japan's Mizuki Noguchi in Athens last year, will make her first full-marathon appearance in Japan in the Jan. 29 race when she competes against the likes of Romania's Lidia Simon and Latvian Elena Prokopcuka.
Simon won the Osaka marathon for three straight years from 1998 while Prokopcuka took last year's title.
Japanese invitees include Kiyomi Ogawa, who finished fifth in the Nagoya International Women's Marathon in March, and Kiyoko Shimahara, fifth in the Hokkaido Marathon in August.