Feature Photo: By Whoisjohngalt - Own work, CC0, Link
Last week, USATF announced the entry standard for the 2028 US Olympic Trials Marathon: 2:16 for men and 2:37 for women.
The new men’s standard is two minutes lower than it was in 2024 (2:18). That was a minute faster than it was in 2016 and 2020 (2:19). On the women’s side, the 2028 standard is the same as it was in 2024 (2:37). It was lowered that year from 2:45 (2016 / 2020).
This prompted a pretty active thread on r/AdvancedRunning, and two questions came up more than once:
- Are there (or will there be) enough 2:16 men to fill the field?
- Why did the women’s standard remain the same?
When you look at things through the lens of today, a two minute shift seems like a huge deal. For an individual runner who is working towards 2:18 – those two extra minutes can be miles away. In that respect, cutting the time would seemingly cut down the field drastically.
But on my run this morning, a thought popped into my head. I just published an analysis of demographic trends in the last few years (request a free link behind the paywall here), and here’s the main take away: the rapid growth in the sport is driven largely by a surge in young runners, particularly men in their 20’s.
Men in their 20’s and early 30’s today are the ones most likely to hit the OTQ standard in a few years. If that portion of the field is growing rapidly, it stands to reason that their could be quite a few more qualifiers out there – a similar dynamic to the one that’s pushing the Boston qualifying times down.
The qualifying window doesn’t open until September 1, so it’s too early to make any serious guess at how many qualifiers there could be. But I thought it might be worth taking a look at how the field has changed in the last two years, because that could give us some insight into what will happen in the next few.
How Demographics Have Changed From 2023 to 2024
First, let me briefly recap the demographic analysis that got me thinking about this.
We know that there is a surge in participation at marathons around the United States and the world. That’s pretty obvious at this point. I wanted to know more about who the new runners are, so I gathered the results from the 25 largest races in the United States and looked at how the demographics of those runners have been changing.
Here are a few basic conclusions:
- Marathon participation peaked in 2014 and then began to decline through 2019. Since COVID, however, participation levels have rebounded – and many races (but not all) are larger than they’ve ever been.
- Young men in particular were on the decline through the late 2010’s, and men in their 20’s have driven the largest share of growth post-COVID.
- Young women had also plateaued pre-COVID, and their age group is growing post-COVID, but not as fast as young men.
- From 2001 to 2019, there were more women in their 20’s. That dynamic has flipped – and from 2021 to 2024, there have been more men in their 20’s than women – and their age group is growing faster.
- Based on median finish times, younger runners are improving at a similar rate to older runners – so there’s no evidence that this new cohort of runners is any slower than previous cohorts of runners.
In the USATF announcement, they indicated that their decision was based on the goal of a 200 person field for both the men’s and women’s event.
The men’s entry (‘B’) standard has been lowered by two minutes from 2:18:00 in 2024 to 2:16:00 in 2028, while the women’s standard will remain at 2:37:00. Both standards were set based on data from the 2024 Olympic Trials qualification period with a goal of roughly 200-athlete fields in 2028.
In 2024, there were 227 qualifiers on the men’s side and 179 of them actually started the race. On the women’s side, there were 173 qualifiers and 137 of them actually started the race.
So that gives us a starting point. Now let’s consider what’s actually changing in the field – and what that might portend for the future.
Changes in the Men’s Field
In 2024, there were 227 qualifiers and 179 of them actually ran the Trials. The number of qualifiers dropped by 33 from 2020, when the standard was lowered from 2:19 to 2:18.
If the goal is to have a field of 200, then last year’s field was slightly below the mark. But not by a lot. If the standards remain the same, and the overall field of qualifiers grows significantly – the field at the Trials will be too large.
The question, then, is whether the field of potential qualifiers is on pace to grow. In general, the number of young men is rising sharply. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the number of potential qualifiers is growing, too.
For a preliminary look, we can use the data from the Boston Marathon Cutoff Tracker to see how the number of faster men is changing. I started by setting the bar at 2:30, and I ran the data to see how the number of men hitting that mark changed from the previous qualifying period (9/1/23 to 6/2/24) and compared that to the current qualifying period (9/1/23 to 6/1/25).
Overall, the number of men running sub-2:30 increased by 22% (1,278 to 1,564).
The data on which country a runner represents is a bit messy, so I did not filter this to just American runners. But the dataset does include two foreign races (London and Berlin), so I separated them out. I also separated Boston out, because there’s an assumed increase from last year to this year due to the poor weather at the 2024 Boston Marathon.
Perhaps the most relevant of these four graphs is the one in the top left – the number of runners from other marathons in the United States besides Boston. The number of men under 30 increased 18% and the number of men in their 30’s increased 15%.
There’s a pretty big jump from 2:30 to 2:16, so what if we lower the bar to 2:20?
The number of men across all races increased by 24% (297 to 267), and the number at US races other than Boston increased 22% (187 to 228).
What Does This Mean For 2028?
I’d posit that three things are true.
Of 2024’s 227 qualifiers, 86 of them qualified with a time under 2:16. Another 134 qualified with a time of 2:16:01 to 2:18:00. So clearly, those two minutes are significant. If the overall field doesn’t change, this could drastically reduce the size of the qualifying field.
But, if you lower the bar from 2:18 to 2:16, some non-zero amount of existing runners will push themselves to get there. Yes, it’s a big leap, but there are at least a few guys out there who ran a 2:16:XX or a 2:17:XX and with the proper motivation and circumstances could go a little faster. So you wouldn’t necessarily cut the field all the way from 227 to 86.
On the other hand, the field is growing at the fast end. There are more men running under 2:30 and more men running under 2:20. It stands to reason that some of these additional men will also run under 2:16.
The field grew by ~20% from one year to the next. It will likely continue to grow over the next two years. If you applied just a 10% bump to the previous qualifying pool, you’d have a full race. If you assume a 20% to 30% bump, under the previous standards, you’ve now got well over 200 runners. And it’s possible that the overall field grows by even more than that when all is said and done.
So yes, from an individual perspective, this is a huge deal. And there will be people (not me, because I wouldn’t make it either way) who will have their hopes of an OTQ crushed by this announcement.
But – if the goal is to have a race with ~200 participants – it’s necessary. The same dynamics – more and faster runners – that are pushing the Boston Marathon qualifying standards down are at play here, too.
Maybe in retrospect the two minute drop will end up being too much, and 2:17 will have been a better standard. But leaving the standard at 2:18 would almost definitely lead to too large of a field.
What About the Women’s Field?
From 2020 to 2024, the women’s standard saw a much more drastic change. It had been 2:45, and it was dropped eight minutes to 2:37. That big drop was a result of the huge field that qualified for the 2020 Trials – over 500 women, of whom 475 ran the race.
That drastic change was necessary to reign in the field, but it was also an over correction. The result of this change was that this year’s qualifying field was below 200 (173 women), and only 137 ran the race.
So there is a lot more room for the women’s side of things to grow back before they hit the 200 person goal.
With that in mind, how is the women’s field changing? The visual below is structured the same as the men’s – but for the women I started with a threshold of 2:50.
The total number of women running under 2:50 increased by 21% (678 to 821).
At American races, that increase is only 10% for women under 30. But it is 21% for women in their 30’s. There’s a much larger increase at Boston, and some of that is likely due to the weather differences between 2024 and 2025.
Notice also that the numbers here are far lower than for the men. At American races, there were only 522 women under 2:50 – compared to 892 men under 2:30. If you include Boston, the difference is 631 to 1,079.
If you lower the bar to 2:40 – closer to the standard – the numbers are much smaller. And if you exclude Boston, the increase was also small – 144 to 155.
So What Does This Mean For 2028?
So when you look at the actual number of women who qualified for the 2024 Olympic Trials Marathon, it was lower than the men. And when you zoom out to the pool of women who are close enough to potentially improve into that qualifying pool – it’s smaller than the similar group of men.
And while that group (and the number of women in general) is growing, it’s not growing nearly as much as the similar group on the men’s side.
Sure, if you wanted to make the qualifying times equivalent, you could lower the women’s standard a little bit. 2:31-2:32 might be a better “equivalent” time – and that would have dropped last cycle’s qualifying pool all the way to between 41 and 52. Still large enough to have a race, but much smaller than where 2:16 would have taken the men.
If you wanted to shrink the women’s pool to the same level as the men, you could go with a qualifying time of 2:34 (72) or 2:35 (87).
But if you leave the current standard in place, you’ve got plenty of room to grow. And the field on the women’s side is not growing at the same rate as the men. Making another change this year for the women would probably result in a smaller field – maybe 100 or so women. But if they leave the standard the same and assume some growth, they’ll likely land closer to the goal of 200 – but not exceed it.
How Do You Feel About the New Olympic Trials Marathon Entry Standards?
Time will tell whether the decision USATF made was the right one. They’ve set a goal – a field of about 200 runners – and we can use that to evaluate this decision later on.
If they end up with a field that’s too big or too small, you could consider that a failure. At the moment, I’d say it’s possible that they fall a bit short on the men’s side. If the field continues to grow, then there could be 200 qualifying runners – but if growth peters out, it might end up closer to 150. The real question is whether they should have gone with a smaller change from 2:18 to 2:17.
On the women’s side, I think leaving the standard alone is definitely the right call. There’s little chance, given the current trends, of the field exploding above 200. And if they cut the standard anymore, they’d likely end up with a much smaller field. Assuming some growth and improvement, they should be on pace to hit 150 to 200 runners in the women’s race.
The other question, though, is whether this is the right target.
Some runners aspire to run an OTQ as a long term goal after a BQ. There’s a large distance between those two goals, but there aren’t a lot of intermediate goals.
Those people complain about changes to the OTQ – because it seemingly widens that distance and pushes the OTQ out of reach. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that at the same time the OTQ has changed, the BQ has also changed.
In 2008, when a B standard OTQ was a relatively more attainable 2:22, BQ for the 18-34 age group was 3:10 – with no cutoff. Despite the OTQ being lowered by 6 minutes, the gap between the two has actually shrunk. In 2026, you’ll need at least a 2:55 – and likely a 2:50 with the cutoff – to get into Boston. And that could conceivably get even lower by the end of the Olympic qualifying period.
But right now, the OTQ has gone from an age grade of 87.97 in 2008 to 88.66 in 2028. Meanwhile, BQ (for a 30 year old man) has gone from 64.06 in 2008 to 70.93 in 2026 (assuming 2:50). Are they still far apart? Yes. But you could argue that the net change to the BQ is much greater.
At the end of the day, I’m sympathetic to the idea that there should be something for aspiring runners to target. But OTQ just doesn’t seem like the right thing. Realistically, there are only a few hundred men and women that are close enough to grasp that. There are thousands more in the gray area between BQ and OTQ.
What do you think?