Six Star Finisher Update Post Boston Marathon

Feature photo courtesy of erp3d on reddit

Recently, I did two in depth analyses of data related to the six star finishers. I published the last one last week – in the lead up to Boston – and I thought it would be interesting to do a quick follow up to see what changed with this week’s race.

After some of the conversations around the data, I went back to look at the source – the AWMM Six Star Finisher Hall of Fame. I realized it also includes data on four star finishers. By tracking this over time, it’ll be interesting to see just how that pipeline changes.

Working with the data also highlighted a potential problem. As people run the same race more than once, their fastest time is recorded in the Hall of Fame. This causes some issues with determining how long people spent on their Six Star journey. But if I start tracking this over time, I’ll have a more robust dataset.

So I decided to collect this data after each Major. At some point, I might build a more complete dashboard to explore some of the data. But for now, I just wanted to share a few highlights.

I also wanted to get this out quickly because there’s another Major coming up this weekend: London.

So I’ll probably do something similar in the weeks after London, and then I’ll come back to this in the summer when I have more time to dig in – and combine the data with other available information, like runners’ age and states / provinces.

How Many New Six Star Finishers Are There?

Last month, there were well over 2,000 new Six Star finishers at Tokyo. For the last few years, it has been the biggest race at which people finish their journey.

But when I looked at the Five Star finishers, many of them still needed to complete Boston. And matching that list up to the Boston entry list suggested there were over 1,000 runners poised to finish their journey on Monday.

So how many new Six Star Finishers were there?

Note: The original data released on 4/23 was incomplete. I collected the data a second time on 4/24, and the numbers increased slightly.

This visual shows the number of runners in each group (four, five, or six stars) after Tokyo (the left bar) and after Boston (the middle bar). The third bar in each group is the number of runners moving up to that category.

There are 1,545 who completed their Six Star journey at Boston. That brings the total number to 21,663.

Another 873 moved up from Four Star status to Five star. That’s fewer than the number who graduated to Six Star status – so the total number of Five Star finishers dropped slightly.

Meanwhile, there were enough new Four Star finishers (1,028) to increase their overall numbers a tiny bit.

Note: This is a unique count of athletes (based on their AWMM ID’s) who are now in a given category but weren’t in that category before. There are some additional people (~100) who are now Six Star Finishers with results from the 2025 Boston Marathon on their record – but were already Six Star Finishers when they ran the 2024 Boston Marathon last year.

Which Race Are People Missing?

When I looked at the Five Star finishers after Tokyo, the three most common races runners’ needed were Boston, Tokyo, and London – in that order.

The visual below is updated to show the current most common missing races – and I’ve added data on the (two) races missing for Four Star finishers.

Now, Boston and Tokyo are neck and neck. Previously, Tokyo was significantly lower, and that was probably due to the fact that I ran the data immediately after 2,000+ finishers ran Tokyo.

In this case, many of the new Five Star finishers who earned their fifth star at Boston now have one race remaining – Tokyo. And many of the Five Star finishers who previously needed to finish Boston are now Six Star finishers.

When you zoom out and look at the Four Star finishers, Tokyo is the tallest bar – by far – followed by Boston and London. This reinforces the conclusion I came to early, which is that most people start with NYC, Chicago, and/or Berlin … and then they struggle to finish up the final three.

Where Were the Finishers From?

Among all Six Star Finishers, the largest group is American – followed by British, Italian, and German.

What do the new Six Star finishers look like?

The largest group is American – about 25%. And British runners still come in second.

China moved up a few spots, but otherwise the group and the proportions look pretty similar. And the remainder of the world still makes up a big portion of the new finishers.

One group that’s conspicuously missing from the top 10 is Canadians. They’re in the top ten overall (#5), so I was a little surprised not to see them here.

But when I dug a little deeper, I found two things. First, there are relatively fewer four and five star Canadians. It looks like many of them finished their Six Stars already – but there aren’t nearly as many of them in the pipeline.

Second, of the existing five star finishers who are Canadian, relatively few of them need Boston as their final star. Many more of them need Tokyo, and about the same number need London as Boston. So it’s not that surprising that they aren’t well represented at this race.

A final thing to note here is the gender distribution. Americans are roughly 50-50 – with a slight majority of women (184-170). Every other country leans male, with Britain and Austria being the closest to even. But some of the European countries (looking at you, Spain, France and the Netherlands) were almost entirely men.

Who Are Some Notable Six Star Finishers?

Finally, let me call out a few of the notable finishers who stand out from the rest.

First up: the fastest.

On social media, AWMM announced that Pedro Perez Gonzalez was the first Six Star Finisher of the day … But he wasn’t.

That honor goes to Catherine Debrunner.

She’s a wheelchair athlete, and she’s pretty good, too. She has already won the other five Majors – and this was her first time at Boston. She finished second in 1:37:26.

Next up is Pedro Perez Gonzalez. He’s the fastest man among the new Six Star Finishers, coming across in 2:37:58 (584th male overall). I saw him on AWWM’s Facebook page, celebrating the first Six Star Finisher of the day. He ran Tokyo last month, and he completed the other four races last year.

The final speed demon is Paula Radcliffe – the same Paula Radcliffe who notched wins at London, Chicago, and New York in her hay day … along with a longstanding world record. She’d already completed the other four races during her professional career, but she just got around to Tokyo and Boston this year.

She finished in style – winning her age group (50-54) in 2:53:44. Yowza.

Two more notables are Isabella Malick and Matt McDonnell. They’re the youngest finishers – completing their quest at the ripe young age of 23.

Isabella ran Chicago back in 2019 – when she would have been only 18 – and finished the other races after COVID. Of all six races, Boston was her best time. She was diagnosed with MS at a young age, and she runs to bring awareness of the disease. She’s raised over $25k for the National MS Society.

And finally, we have two real champions who have stood the test of time: Que Pham and Jack Hirschowitz.

Que Pham is a 76 year old woman. She completed all six races in the last two years – capping things off with a 5:19 at Boston. That’s equivalent, according to age grading, to a 3:17. She’s already completed 50 half marathons in fifty states, and now she’s working on marathons. Because Six Stars isn’t enough.

Jack Hirschowitz is an 80 year old man. He didn’t start his journey until later in life – but he did run NYC back in 2015 and London back in 2016. He finished Boston in 4:52 – equivalent to a 3:01. And just to make things more difficult … he’s also a joggler. That’s right, he juggled his way through the Boston Marathon.

What’s In Store for London?

A few days from now, another batch of runners – likely close to 56,000 – will complete one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. Surely, somewhere between a few hundred and a thousand of them will be completing their journey – and earning their Sixth Star.

Unlike Boston, there’s no way to know who’s actually registered for the race ahead of time. So we’ll have to just wait and see. As of the end of the Tokyo Marathon, about 1,800 runners had Five Stars and needed a finish at London. Another 200 Five Star finishers were added to that group after Boston.