We’re getting to the end of the qualifying period for the 2026 Boston Marathon, and all signs are pointing towards a cutoff time in excess of five minutes. But there’s one big unanswered question that could influence where things actually land: how much do the results of the Sydney Marathon matter?
On the one hand, the results of the Sydney Marathon shouldn’t matter all that much. Historically, relatively few qualifiers from Sydney actually applied to run Boston. So even if there are a lot of additional qualifiers from this event, it shouldn’t really impact things.
On the other hand, this year is different. The 2026 qualifying period included both the 2024 and 2025 Sydney Marathons, so there are a lot of additional finishers. The race has grown tremendously in the last two years, and now that it’s an official Major that could influence who runs the race – and whether they’re likely to apply for Boston.
For similar reasons as the Tokyo Marathon, I haven’t added the results of Sydney to the Boston Marathon Cutoff Time Tracker. But the results could be a meaningful wildcard, and it definitely makes sense to analyze just how much of a difference they will or won’t make.
How Many Finishers at the Sydney Marathon Qualified for Boston?
Let’s start with the most straightforward question – how many finishers at the Sydney Marathon qualified for Boston, and how has this changed in the past few years?
The Sydney Marathon course is fairly hilly and it’s one of the slower courses among the Majors, so you wouldn’t expect the rate of Boston qualification to be that high. In addition, the results of the 2024 and 2025 races are subject to the new, tougher Boston qualifying times. But the race grew so much from 2023 to 2025 that there are still likely to be many more qualifiers in this qualifying period.
The visual below shows the number of finishers and the number of Boston Qualifiers in each of the last three years. Remember that the 2023 race was in the qualifying period for the 2025 Boston Marathon, and both the 2024 and 2025 races are in the qualifying period for the 2026 Boston Marathon.
The number of finishers has increased rapidly in the past two years. The number increased by about 50% from 2023 to 2024, and it increased another 50% from 2024 to 2025.
On the right side, there is a massive increase in qualifiers from 2023 to 2024. The number more than triples. The abnormally high number of qualifiers this year is likely a result of the Age Group World Championships being held as part of the Sydney Marathon – adding 1,500 very fast runners.
Although the increase from 2024 to 2025 is smaller, the overall growth in qualifiers from 2023 to 2025 is much larger than the growth in finishers. The number of finishers goes from 13k to 32k – an increase of about 150%. But the number of qualifiers jumps from 700 to 2,800 – an increase of 300%.
In part, this could be the result of them modifying the course for 2025 and making it faster. But the weather in 2023 was also quite warm – 60’s at the start and 80’s by the finish. So the 2023 race likely had an uncharacteristically low rate of qualification. The 2025 race had an overall qualification rate of 8.8% – which is similar to that of New York.
Regardless of the reasons, one thing is very true: Sydney produced way more qualifiers in the 2026 qualifying period than in the 2025 qualifying period.
The 2023 race produced 707 qualifiers and the 2024 and 2025 races combined produced 5,184 qualifiers.
That’s a huge increase. But will it actually matter?
What Do We Know About the Conversion Rate of Boston Qualifiers At the Sydney Marathon?
The harder question to answer is how many of these qualifiers will actually apply to run Boston. If a lot of these runners apply, then this large of an increase would have a huge impact on the cutoff time. But if relatively few of these runners apply, the impact will be minimal.
A few months ago, I analyzed the results of the 2025 Boston Marathon to see which races yielded more or less applicants. A typical North American race – including Boston, New York, and Chicago – had a conversion rate of about 30% to 40%. The European majors – London and Berlin – had a conversion rate of just under 20%. Tokyo’s conversion rate was about 12%.
And Sydney? Between 5% and 10%.
However, it is worth noting that this was based on the conversion of Boston qualifiers from the 2023 Sydney Marathon. At that point, Sydney was on the road to becoming a Major. But it was still in transitional status from large regional race to huge international Major.
After we account for the number of runners who qualified at both the 2024 and 2025 races, there was a net increase of about 4,000 qualifiers from last qualifying period to this qualifying period. If only 5% of them actually apply, that’s 200 applicants. It’s not nothing – but it’s not enough to have a huge impact.
But if the conversion rate of the qualifiers at the new Sydney Marathon is closer to that of Tokyo, you’re looking at 500 applicants. And if the conversion rate is closer to that of London or Berlin, you’re looking at closer to 750 applicants.
That would be enough to meaningfully sway things.
Is The Conversion Rate Likely to Be Higher This Year?
Without digging too deeply, you may well expect that the conversion rate at the 2024 and 2025 races will be higher than at the 2023 race.
By 2025, the race was officially a part of the Majors, and it attracted an international crowd that likes to participate in other Majors – including Boston. The 2024 race also included the Age Group World Championships, another group of runners highly motivated to complete prestigious races … like Boston.
But digging beneath the surface, the distribution of where runners come from can also reveal a lot about whether runners are likely to run Boston or not. The majority of the field at Boston comes from the United States, and the third of the field that is international comes primarily from a select group of countries.
Those countries are more well represented at London and Germany than at Tokyo – and those races have higher conversion rates than Tokyo. So where are the qualifiers at Sydney from?
The visual below calls out runners from the United States and the next ten most well represented countries at Boston. All other countries are colored grey.
In 2023, an overwhelming share of the field was Australian. Australia is not one of the top countries at Boston. Just a tiny sliver of that year’s qualifiers came from countries that are well represented at Boston.
In 2024, that distribution changed. About one third of the qualifiers at the 2024 Sydney Marathon came from common Boston countries. In 2025, the relative share went down to closer to 25% – although the absolute numbers are a little higher.
So in the two most recent years, a much larger share of the Boston qualifiers at Sydney have come from countries that are well represented at Boston – including the United States and Great Britain.
It’s quite likely that the conversion rate from the 2024 and 2025 races is higher than it was on 2023. And this distribution – where between a quarter and a third of qualifiers comes from countries well represented at Boston – is much closer to Tokyo than to London or Berlin. I’d say it’s a fair assumption that the conversion rate from Sydney will be relatively similar to that of Tokyo.
What’s the Bottom Line on How Much Impact This Could Have?
Initially, I had no plans to incorporate the Sydney Marathon results into the cutoff time tracker, and I was ready to write them off as incidental. But the more I dig into the data, I’m convinced that the Sydney Marathon results will put a small but significant upward pressure on the cutoff time this year.
Yes, the conversion rate from this race is low. But it’ll likely be a little higher this year than it was last year. And regardless of the conversion rate, there were just so many additional qualifiers in this qualifying period that it’s hard to write them off completely.
I updated the data for the applicant predictor dashboard to include the results of the Sydney Marathon. If you assume that Sydney has a similar conversion rate to Tokyo, including those results adds about 400 additional applicants to the pool. That’s roughly equivalent to about 15 seconds on the cutoff time.
To put that in perspective, when the results from the 2025 Boston Marathon added 3,000 qualifiers to the pool, that caused the projection to shoot up by over a minute. That kind of net increase at an American race would have huge implications for the cutoff time. But given the fact that the majority of the qualifiers at Sydney are unlikely to run Boston, the effect here is more muted.
With that question resolved, the only thing left to do is to wait and see how the last chance races turn out this weekend. And the weather is looking mighty fine for Erie.
I realize Sydney’s 2026 registration does not open for a few days but wanted your input. With their High Performance Program / age group and times I keep reading, “The fastest runners in each category will be offered HPP entries”. What does that mean? Is it like Boston – you meet the time to apply, but based on the number of entries and the times they set a cut off time – say 5-10 minutes and if you miss that you still get into the general lottery? Appreciate your input.
Yes, it’s my understanding that if they receive too many applications they’ll use a Boston style cut-off to select people.
Without knowing how many spots they’ve allocated for the high performance program, though, it’s hard to say how likely that is. It could be that language is “just in case,” and they anticipate being able to handle everyone. But it’s also possible they have a small allocation of bibs for the high performance program and it ends up with a really deep cut (like NYC).