The London Marathon was about two weeks ago.
It’s the last of the Majors for the spring – following the Tokyo and Boston Marathons. Those two races each saw a significant number of new Six Star Finishers.
How many new finishers are there after London?
As I did after Boston, I collected the raw data from the WMM Six Star Finishers Hall of Fame. I then compared it to the data I collected after Boston to identify new Finishers in the data.
The results: 819 new Finishers and a total of 22,481 Six Star Finishers.
Keep reading for some details below.
Note: There are some oddities in the way WMM reports the data in the Hall of Fame. As a result, I’m relying on the differences between the data I collected in late April and the new data I collected in early May. Besides actual finishers from London, this includes a handful of finishers who were late additions from Tokyo and Boston.
How Many New Six Star Finishers Are There?
The visual below shows the net changes to both Six Star and Five Star Finishers between the Boston Marathon and the London Marathon.
There are an additional 819 Six Star Finishers. That brings the new grand total to 22,481.
A larger group – 1,606 – moved up to join the ranks of the Five Star Finishers. About twice as many runners gained Five Star status as Six Star status, bumping up the number of existing Five Star finishers to 13,367.
Previously, WMM made Four Star Finisher data available. But it’s no longer accessible, so I won’t be including it moving forward.
Who Are the New Six Star Finishers?
Who are the 819 new Six Star Finishers?
The visual below breaks them out by both gender and nationality. The nine largest countries are identified specifically, and the rest are lumped together as “Other.”
The United States is, as usual, the largest group. Although in this case, they’re a disproportionate number of new finishers. Overall, about 25% of Six Star Finishers are from the United States – but they represent just under 50% of the new Finishers from London.
Another interesting peculiarity about this data is that runners from Great Britain were not in the top 10. Despite the fact that the majority of the field at London is made up of British runners, only 14 new Six Star Finishers were British.
This is likely because British runners have an easier time getting into London, and I’m assuming they’re much more likely to earn that star early in their journey. For foreigners, it’s tougher to get into London, since Good for Age isn’t an option – leaving the lottery (with abysmal odds), charity, or tour operators.
The gender distribution is pretty typical.
Among American runners, it’s split almost 50-50. Canadians are close to evenly split, as well. Australia is the only country with women as the majority – but there were only 18 new Six Star Finishers from Australia.
The rest of the countries are increasingly unbalanced, and outside of the top nine countries, over 70% of the finishers are men.
Zooming out to the full group, the split is roughly 2-1. There are 7,891 women among Six Star Finishers and 14,590 men.
What Races Are the Five Star Finishers Missing?
Following the London Marathon, there are over 1,500 new Five Star Finishers – and over 13,000 total Five Star finishers. What race are they missing?
Tokyo and Boston remain the two most common missing races. Of the new Five Star Finishers, 852 of them now only need Tokyo. 558 of them only need Boston.
A much smaller group of runners needs the other races.
Given the fact that so few people currently need Berlin, Chicago, or New York to finish their journey, there will likely be very few additional Six Star Finishers by the end of 2025. There were large increases at Tokyo, Boston, and London – but that won’t continue in the fall.
There are actually nine new Five Star Finishers who need to complete the London Marathon. This threw me for a loop at first, because everyone on this group should have just completed the London Marathon.
But there were a handful of people who were added to the Hall of Fame late – from both Boston and Tokyo. And one brand new person who hadn’t run a race in several years, but must have just signed up for the Hall of Fame.
Who Are the Fastest New Finishers?
There were quite a few speedy runners among the new Six Star Finishers.
Among the men, the five fastest runners were:
- Matthew Beamer (USA): 2:30:48
- Yong He (SGP): 2:33:16
- Petur Bjarnason (ISL): 2:34:58
- Robin Siegert (GER): 2:37:59
- J Matthew Medeiros (USA): 2:41:39
And among the women, the five fastest runners were:
- Ashley Althaus (USA): 2:45:30
- Michelle Spencer (CAN): 2:49:13
- Susan Stead (GER): 2:57:55
- Heidi Bock (USA): 2:58:23
- Lindy Zeng (USA): 2:58:25
I think sometimes there’s a perception that Six Star Finishers don’t take the sport seriously – and they’re more interested in completing marathons than racing them.
Everyone has their priorities and reason for running. And there are definitely some people who don’t care about their times.
But these runners are fast!
What Would You Like to Know About Six Star Finishers?
Over the next month or two – definitely before Berlin – I’m going to work on matching these results up with their individual race results to get the age and states of the runners. I’m then going to work on building out a dashboard that’ll let you explore some of this data – including a ranking of finishers by their times.
If there’s anything you’re interested in – leave a comment. I’ll see if I can work it into the dashboard or answer the question in a future post.
One final tidbit from London. The oldest new Six Star Finisher from London is Chi San Lee of Taiwan.
Chi San Lee is listed in the London Marathon results in the 80+ age group. Chi San was 72 when he ran in the New York City Marathon in 2016 – which means he is currently 80-81 years old.
The Six Star Finisher stats on WMM’s website suggests the oldest Finisher from London was 74. But I see at least two runners – Chi San and Peter Wilson of Great Britain (77) – who are older than that.