by Brett Larner The 30th and final edition of the Tokyo International Women's Marathon takes place this Sunday, Nov. 16, starting and finishing at Tokyo's National Stadium. TIWM was the world's first women-only elite marathon at the time of its inception in 1979, a time when Japan's male marathoners were among the most dominant in the world and there were no world-class Japanese women in the marathon scene. 30 years, two Olympic gold medals and a world record later, Japan's women are its most respected distance runners both domestically and worldwide. The list of TIWM winners contains many of the sport's great names, historical and modern. Joyce Smith, Katrin Doerre, Rosa Mota, Valentina Yegorova, Joyce Chepchumba, Derartu Tulu, Elfenesh Alemu, Naoko Takahashi, Reiko Tosa and Mizuki Noguchi all won. The birth of the Tokyo Marathon in 2007 brought the big city major marathon to Japan; with the addition of an elite women's field for the 2009 Tokyo Marathon, ...
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