Who Are the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Finishers?

When I ran my first marathon — Atlantic City, 2021 — I didn’t know much about this whole world of marathon running.

But as soon as I finished, I was hooked. I sat at the beach bar, recovering from the race with a nice cold beer, Googling and planning out my next steps.

What should I run next? If I work hard, can I qualify for Boston?

Wait, what’s this Six Star thing?

At the time, Six Star finishers were still pretty rare. There were only 5,000 or 6,000 back then. Since then, it seems like everyone is keen to become a Six Star finisher. Although the total is still small, their numbers are growing fairly rapidly.

I saw some stats shared in a Facebook group about the Majors, and it made me curious. Can we dig a little deeper to better understand who these finishers are and find out some interesting things about the races along the way?

It turns out there is a publicly accessible dataset of all (officially recognized) Six Star finishers that will let us do just that.

I collected the data and put together an analysis of who the Six Star Finishers are. That’s published in Runner’s Life on Medium. If you’re not a Medium subscriber, you can request a special link to get behind the paywall here.

In the meantime, here’s a brief recap of some of the data from that analysis.

How Many Six Star Finishers Are There?

This analysis was done in late March 2025 – after the 2025 Tokyo Marathon but before the 2025 Boston and London Marathons. At that time, there were 20,117 names listed in the AWMM Six Star Hall of Fame.

That number has increased significantly in the last few years. The visual below shows the number of new Six Star Finishers per year (the bars) and the cumulative total at the end of the year (the line).

Although Six Star Finishers weren’t officially recognized at the time, the earliest runners to complete all six races did so in 2007 – the inaugural year of the Tokyo Marathon.

The group started to grow more quickly following the official announcement of the Six Star Finisher program in 2013. And it continued to grow after the creation of the Six Star Medal in 2016.

In 2019, there were 2,000 new finishers – a record at the time. The next year, COVID prevented any new runners from earning their sixth star, and 2021 and 2022 were slow years due to the reduced field sizes at most of the big races.

But in 2023, the Six Star Finisher program roared back in a big way. About 5,000 new Six Star Finishers were minted in both 2023 and 2024, and 2025 is on track to see a similar number.

In the full analysis, you can also see at which race each of these Six Star Finishers earned their Six Star Medal.

Who Are They and Where Are They From?

The next visual answers two separate questions:

1. Where are the Six Star Finishers From?
2. What’s the gender distribution of Six Star Finishers?

The bars show the number of Six Star Finishers from each of the top ten countries, and the final bar shows the number from the rest of the world. For each bar, the two colors denote the number of men (at the bottom) and the number of women (at the top).

By far, the single largest source of Six Star Finishers is the United States. But the 5,000 or so American runners only represent a little more than a quarter of all the finishers.

Great Britain is also home to a large number (~2,000) of finishers, and that’s followed by a number of countries with 500 to 1,000 additional Six Star Finishers.

But a third of all Six Star Finishers come from other countries beyond the top ten. They’re spread around the world.

Across the board, about two thirds of Six Star Finishers are men and one third are women. But this varies quite a bit by country.

The United States and Canada are unique in that a slight majority of Six Star Finishers from those countries are women. Every other country leans male – with Great Britain being about 2-1 men and Spain being the most imbalanced group at around 6-1 men.

Where Do They Start and End Their Journey?

The next visual highlights the first and last race in each runner’s Six Star journey.

The six bars on the left indicate how many runners earned their first star at each of the six races. The six bars on the right indicate how many runners earned their last star at each of the six races.

The largest group of runners – over one third – started their journey at the New York City Marathon. That’s followed by a roughly equal number of runners at both the Berlin and Chicago Marathons.

Berlin, London, and Tokyo are often considered the more difficult races to get into. Still, it’s a bit surprising at first glance that so many more runners started their Six Star journey at Boston. Over 10% earned their first star on Boylston Street.

By far, the least likely first stop on the journey is Tokyo. Only about 3.5% of all Six Star Finishers ran their first race at Tokyo.

The right side of this visual is, in some ways, a mirror version of the left. The three most common first stars are the three least common last stars (Berlin, Chicago, New York). And the three least common first stars are the three most common last stars (Boston, London, Tokyo).

But the disparity between those six races is much larger. Collectively, the three least common races account for ~15% of all finishers and the most common race accounts for over half. By comparison, the three least common first stars represent ~25% of all finishers and the most common (NYC) is only one third.

While a significant number of runners end their Six Star journey at Boston and London, the majority – well over 10,000 – do so at Tokyo. It is, by far, the race that runners are most likely to finish last.

These patterns vary by country, and if you read the full analysis I break it out by runners from the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of the world.

How Long Does It Take Runners To Earn Their Six Star Medals?

These days, everybody seems to be in a rush. But this is a long term commitment.

How many years does it take, on average, for someone to earn their Six Star Medal?

The graph below shows the average (mean) number of years it took finishers to complete their quest, based on the year they earned their medal. Note that 0 would mean that they earned all their stars in a single year. A value of 1 would be two consecutive years (2024 – 2023). So on and so forth.

Remember that there weren’t very many Six Star Finishers before 2013. It wasn’t until the end of 2013 that the number cracked 100. So you shouldn’t pay much attention to the left third of this graph.

From 2015 to 2019, the average time span for a runner to complete their Six Star journey is around 6 to 7 years. Post-COVID, this number increases to 8 to 9 years.

The increase after COVID is likely attributable to the fact that very few runners were able to earn stars in 2020 and 2021. This effectively added two years to people who started their journey – and if the average timespan is 6 to 7, most of the finishers in the last few years started before COVID.

That being said, there are some Six Star Finishers who have taken over 40 years to collect all six medals. And a select few have managed the feat in a single calendar year. Check out the full analysis to see the distribution of these time spans among all Six Star Finishers.

What Questions Do You Have About Six Star Finishers?

Again, this is just a portion of the full analysis that I published on Medium. And if you’re not a Medium subscriber, you can request a link to get behind the paywall here.

But I also plan to publish a follow up answering some additional questions. That includes the following:

1. Of the current Five Star finishers, which race are people still waiting to finish? Is it Tokyo, or is it a different race?
2. How old are runners when they finish their journey?
3. In which race did they run the fastest? Which race was their slowest?
4. How many of the finishers are fast enough to have qualified for Boston — and how many had to find another avenue of entry into the world’s oldest marathon?
5. Will growth continue at this rapid pace — 5,000+ Finishers per year — or will it taper off in the next few years?