Last summer, the BAA announced a new downhill results index that would penalize qualifying times from races with excessive net elevation drop. This applied to the various Tunnel races, REVEL races, and a handful of other races.
At the start of this qualifying period, I predicted that these changes would likely have a small impact on the overall cutoff time. Simply applying the rules to the previous year’s results suggested that the number of BQ’s would drop by ~1,200. But the actual change could be less if a) more races modified their courses and b) REVEL Big Bear returned after being canceled in 2024.
I ballparked the impact at about a 15 second reduction in the cutoff time, give or take.
We are now at the end of the qualifying period for the 2027 Boston Marathon. One final downhill race (Tunnel Lite Marathon) is taking place today. The rest are all complete. So we can now take a look back at this qualifying period and see what actually happened.
Changes to the Race Line Up
Before we get to the actual data, let’s just review the ways in which the line up of downhill races changed this year.
First, REVEL Big Bear had been cancelled in 2024. It was a big downhill qualifying race. I expected it to return in 2025. But it was once again cancelled due to weather conditions. This means a) we don’t know how this would have impacted the results from that race and b) a large tranche of expected additional qualifiers didn’t materialize.
Second, a number of races modified their courses to eliminate the five minute penalty. The 2025 Tunnel Lite Marathon did not, but the remaining Tunnel Marathons did. Utah Valley, Tucson, and Deseret News Classic also changed their courses to come in just under the 1,500 feet where the five minute penalty applies.
This left only two other races with a five minute penalty – St. George and Pocatello.
None of the steeper, 10-minute races modified their courses. So the larger penalty still applied to the remaining REVELs (Big Cottonwood, Mt. Charleston, and the limited edition Reno Tahoe), as well as Huntsville and Mt. Nebo. The Las Vegas Marathon also had a last minute course change, and it shifted from the 5 minute penalty column to the 10 minute penalty column.
So, as predicted, the five minute category was very light as a result of course changes but the ten minute category remained largely unchanged.
How Did the Number of Finishers Change?
Next, let’s look at how the number of finishers at these races changed. Last year, there were a total of just under 20,000 runners who ran one of these races.
For the most part, that number dropped significantly. REVEL Mt. Charleston had the biggest drop (1,211 / 51%), but Cottonwood, Mt. Nebo and Las Vegas also lost a significant number of finishers. Huntsville, which is much smaller, still saw a 12% drop. This is not all that surprising, given the large 10 minute penalty on these races.
Two of the five minute penalty courses (Pocatello and the 2025 Tunnel Lite Marathon) also saw decreases. I was a bit surprised that Tunnel Lite saw such a significant drop (-44%), but it’s not surprising that some number of runners shifted from a downhill race to a flatter race without a penalty.
St. George was one of the outliers which grew over 10%. But it never really fell into the category of downhill marathon. It has its own allure and popularity apart from the fact that it’s a downhill course.
The remaining courses, all of which modified their courses, are more of a mixed bag. Some saw small decreases (Deseret News Classic, Jack and Jill Downhill). Some saw small increases (Cascade Express, Tucson). A couple saw large increases (Super Marathon, Utah Valley). And two – Tunnel Vision and Light at the End of the Tunnel – saw huge decreases.
Overall, the number of finishers across the entire set dropped to 15,670. That’s a 19% decrease over the previous qualifying period. That sits in stark contrast to the overall trend, which has seen 12% more finishers across all races. And if you exclude downhill races and the Majors (where growth is limited), the number of finishers across all other “normal” races is up 20%.
How Many Qualifiers Were Eliminated?
If you limit the impact of this to just the number of runners who were actually eliminated due to the penalty, then that impact is pretty minimal.
About half of the races eliminated the penalty altogether, so there were no qualifiers eliminated from those races.
Of the remaining races with 5 minute penalties, 138 qualifiers were eliminated this year. Last year, these three races had 547 qualifiers. So that’s a 25% reduction.
Of the races with 10 minute penalties, 225 qualifiers were eliminated this year. Last year, these five races (I’m excluding Reno Tahoe here because it has no benchmark for comparison) had a total of 1,410 qualifiers. So that’s a 16% reduction.
In total, 383 qualifiers were eliminated at races with a penalty. Last year, these races generated 3,372 qualifiers. So that’s an 11% reduction.
How Many Fewer Qualifiers Were There Overall?
The bigger story, though, is that the number of qualifiers fell as a result of other factors. REVEL Mt. Charleston offers some insights.
Last year, the race had over 2,000 finishers. This year, that number was cut in half. As expected, many runners chose a different race.
But when you look at the percent of runners who met their qualifying time, that fell even further. Ignore the penalty for a minute, and the share of runners who hit their BQ went from almost 40% to only about 15%.
So not only are far fewer people running some of these downhill races, but the runners that remain appear to be far less focused and/or capable of running a Boston qualifying time. Mt. Charleston is the greatest example of this, with the number of BQ’s declining by 812 (88%) compared to last year.
All told, the number of BQ’s from these races went from about 3,400 in last year’s qualifying period to about 1,600 this year. That’s a decline of ~1,800 and almost 50%.
What’s the Bottom Line?
Now that we can look back at the data from the qualifying period, we can say a bit more definitively what impact the downhill results index has had.
The biggest impact, in terms of reduction in qualifiers, came from the steep downhill races. The REVEL races, especially Mt. Charleston, saw large drops in participation and in qualifying rates. This resulted in a huge drop in BQ’s from this subset of races.
The Tunnel races (Tunnel Lite, Tunnel Vision, and Light at the End of the Tunnel) also saw large declines in participation and in qualifying rates. But, curiously, some of the other races in the area (Cascade Express and Super Marathon) did not feel the same impact.
Some of the other races – i.e. Utah Valley, Tucson, and St. George – were as strong as ever, with more finishers and more qualifiers than the year before.
All told, the actual drop in qualifiers (~1,800) was higher than I expected. However, this was less a result of the actual penalties, which eliminated a relatively small share of qualifiers. It was driven more by the decline in finishers and especially the decline in participation by faster, BQ-capable runners.
If you assume that the rules drove this change in participation, then you could make the argument that the downhill results index reduced BQs at downhill races by ~1,800 and potentially shaved 30-45 seconds off of the cutoff time.
What we don’t know, however, is how many of those runners shifted to flatter races and still ran a qualifying time. Presumably some significant number did, but the actual number is un-knowable.
I think the real impact here is less about a reduction in the cutoff – which is likely minimal – and more about putting everyone on an even playing field. If the goal was to reduce the number of BQ’s coming, especially, from steep downhill races – then I’d say it was a success.
This point is driven home by the fact that REVEL Mt. Charleston was recently cancelled, and I suspect REVEL races in general will pivot towards appealing to slower runners and/or half marathoners.