Feature Image by Acabashi – via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
Last summer, I put together a dashboard to track the fastest Six Star Finishers around the world. This was a follow up on some deeper dives into the Six Star Finisher data from earlier in the year. I intended to do another follow up at the end of the year, but I got sidetracked.
Now that the spring season is over – and Tokyo, Boston, and London are in the books – I collected the new Six Star Finisher data and updated the dashboard. There are 27,769 finishers identified in the Hall of Fame, and all but 181 of them were matched with race results to identify their age and birth year.
Below, I’ll run through a basic analysis of this data. I may return to it next week if there are some other angles worth digging into. Otherwise, I’ll save a deeper dive for the end of the year – when it’ll be easier to make year over year comparisons to past years.
The questions we’ll explore include:
- How quickly is the number of Six Star Finishers increasing?
- What races do Five Star Finishers need to complete?
- How old are the new Six Star Finishers?
- Where are the new Six Star Finishers from?
So let’s dig in.
How Many New Six Star Finishers Are There
After last year’s London Marathon, there were approximately 22,500 Six Star Finishers. Since then, how quickly has the number of Six Star Finishers been growing?
The visual below shows the number of new Six Star Finishers at each race, through the 2026 London Marathon. I’m only showing the counts from 2017 forward. There are a relatively small number of Six Star Finishers from before then.
Post-COVID, the number of new Six Star Finishers has been increasing rapidly. There were about 4,500 new ones added in 2023, and then over 5,500 in each of the past two years.
The fall races typically account for a relatively small share of the new Six Star Finishers. Last fall, Berlin, Chicago, and New York collectively accounted for less than 800 of the new Finishers. This was fewer than in 2024 and similar to 2023.
So far this year, the three spring races have accounted for over 4,000 new Six Star Finishers. The number from Tokyo was slightly lower this year than in previous years, and the number from Boston is the highest it’s ever been. The number from London is in line with there it’s been.
Assuming there are another 800 to 1,000 Six Star Finishers this fall, we’ll end 2026 with just shy of 29,000 Six Star Finishers.
Which Races Are People Missing?
Last year, the number of Five Star Finishers was just over 13,000 following the London Marathon. This was a slight increase from where it was after Boston 2025. Has this number gone up or down since then?
After the 2026 London Marathon, there are now 16,433 Five Star Finishers. So even as the number of Six Star Finishers continues to grow rapidly, the number of Five Star Finishers waiting in the wings is increasing even faster. This is a sign that demand for Six Star status is as high as it has ever been.
By looking at the individual race results for these Five Star Finishers, we can determine which race they are missing. The visual below shows this data and breaks it down according to the year in which they earned their fifth star.
For the older Five Star Finishers – those that date back to pre-COVID or those that earned their fifth star in 2023 or 2024 – they’re almost exclusively missing Tokyo and Boston. The more recent additions are also missing the fall races.
The number of Five Star Finishers missing Berlin, Chicago, or New York are highest among those who just earned their Five Star Finisher status this year – which makes sense because they would have done so at one of the spring races. Presumably, a large share of these finishers will convert to Six Star status this fall.
Another interesting trend is that the number of Five Star Finishers in need of Tokyo is similar. But the number who need Boston has been rapidly increasing. In each of the last two years, ~2,000 runners earned their Fifth Star and are just waiting on Boston.
Historically, both Tokyo and Boston have been bottle necks in this journey. Last year, the number needing Tokyo was slightly higher. The balance has now shifted, and more runners – about 7,000 or 43% – need Boston.
How Old Are the New Six Star Finishers?
Past analysis has shown that the typical Six Star Finisher is middle aged. The typical age of Six Star Finishers tended to be in their 40’s or 50’s, although there are quite a few runners who fall outside that range on either end of the spectrum.
What about the new finishers? As marathoning has seen a surge in popularity among younger runners, has the age of Six Star Finishers also decreased?
The visual below shows the age distribution of new Six Star Finishers in each of the last four years. It’s narrowed down to only include runners who earned their Sixth Star at Tokyo, Boston, or Berlin. This ensures some consistency between the four years, since we don’t yet have data for the Fall 2026 races.
At first glance, the distribution looks similar. But if you hide one or two of the lines and focus on the year over year changes, you’ll see that it’s shifting slightly younger.
Last year and this year are pretty similar. But they’re both slightly to the left of the 2024 graph. And compared to 2023, they have significantly more younger runners in their 30’s and 40’s.
The visual below groups runners into age groups and normalizes the amounts to make it easier to make direct comparisons of the relative size of each age group.
In each of the last four years, the share of runners under 30 has increased. It’s doubled from 2.4% to 4.8%. The other young age groups (30-44) fluctuate year to year, but they don’t change much in one direction of the other.
The offsetting change comes from runners in the late 40’s and early 50’s. The share of runners 45-49 drops from 21% to 18.8% and the share of runners 50-54 drops from 18.1% to 17.1%.
So new finishers are slightly younger on average, with the greatest difference coming in the youngest runners. Runners in their 20’s are still rare, but there are more of them than there were several years ago.
Where Are the New Six Star Finishers From?
One final question for today – is the nationality of these finishers changing at all?
Historically, the largest group of Six Star Finishers is American. But they only account for 25-30% of all Six Star Finishers. The visual below shows the distribution of finishers by nationality, broken down by the year in which they earned their Six Star Status.
The biggest difference is from pre-COVID to post-COVID. The share of Six Star Finishers from the United States was much lower before COVID. Since then, it’s increased from under 20% to over 30%. In that same time period, the share of runners form Brazil has also increased. Most of the others declined or stayed about the same.
Just focusing on the year over year difference between 2025 and 2026, there isn’t much of one. The share of American runners has increased ever so slightly from 2023 to 2026, but it’s hardly significant from one year to the next.
Over time, this will slightly increase the overall share of Six Star Finishers that are American. But they’ll remain less than one third of the overall group.
Notable New Six Star Finishers
A few individual runners stick out from crowd for one reason or another.
Tamerra Buckhanan made headlines when she finished the Boston Marathon at age 82. She also happens to be one of only two new Six Star Finisher this year who is in their 80’s. Her first Major was Chicago back in 2013. She then ran Berlin in 2023, London and New York in 2024, and finally Tokyo and Boston in 2026.
Vladimir Savic, a Slovenian runner, was the oldest man among the group. He ran the Tokyo Marathon this year, at age 82, to earn his Sixth Star. He ran his first Major (Berlin) in 2008, but he’s apparently been running for 30 years. After completing 141 marathons, he’ll be heading to Sydney this summer to earn his Seventh Star.
The runner who appears to be the youngest to finish his Six Stars is Samuel Fetters. He finished the Tokyo Marathon this year at age 21. He ran the 2024 Boston Marathon at just 19 years old to start his Six Star journey. He completed London, Chicago, and New York last year.
A close runner up was Flavien Leutert of Switzerland. He ran Tokyo and Boston this year, at age 22. His first Major was New York City in 2023, when he was just 20 years old.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out my teammate – Donny Santos. He ran his first marathon (Atlantic City) in 2021 and qualified for Boston. The next year, he ran Boston, Chicago and New York. After finishing Berlin in 2023, he’s been trying to get into Tokyo and London. His luck came through this year, and he got into both. He earned his Sixth Star at London.
Do you have a Six Star story to tell? Or a question about the data? Leave a comment below.
How about a listing of the people that have the most stars?
I’ve run more than 80 world Marathon major races. Including 27 Boston’s in a row and 29 New York’s in a row.
Thanks for your hard work.
I would like to see the distribution of men-women-NB for the 6 star. It would be interesting to see that combined with nationality. Since the 3 American majors have the most equal gender distribution I wonder if the majority of women 6 star finishers are American. I’m curious if that’s by a large amount as that’s what I would expect.
The fields for the 3 new races, Sydney, Cape Town and Shanghai are heavily skewed towards male runners so it would be interesting to see how that balance changes for the 9 star.
There’s been some chatter about women “catching up” particularly with the influx of young women in running, but I just don’t see how that’s possible with the balance never tipping towards women for any major, ever in history.
Any case things I wonder about.