To the almost 25,000 athletes that finished the 2022 Boston Marathon yesterday, I say, CONGRATULATIONS! Great job on crossing the most famous marathon finish line in the world! So, I wanted to take a dive into some of the stats from yesterday’s race – because I love marathons and I love numbers! 🙂
Stats from the 2022 Boston Marathon
The Winners
If you watched the 2022 Boston Marathon, you know that there was a tremendously close finish between the first and second place women for the race. There were a number of lead changes in the last mile and the women had really put the hammer down on the pace throughout the race.
The first place woman was Peres Jepchirchir (Kenya)in a time of 2:21:01 followed closed by Ababel Yeshaneh (Ethiopia)with a 2:21:05. The third place finisher for the women was Mary Ngugi (Kenya) with a time of 2:21:35. The first American woman finisher was Nell Rojas who came in with a time of 2:25:57 followed by Stephanie Bruce in 2:28:02. This was Stephanie’s final Boston Marathon as a professional runner so it had to be great pulling in a 2nd place American finish! The third place was former Boston Marathon winner Desiree Linden with a time of 2:28:47
On the men’s side, it was Evans Chebet (Kenya) who had pulled away from the pack and raced the last several miles of the race by himself. He finished in 2:06:51 followed by Lawrence Cherono (Kenya) who was just a mere 30 seconds behind him to claim a 2:07:21. Third place was Benson Kipruto to make a Kenyan sweep of the podium for the men. He came in just behind Lawrence in a time of 2:07:27.
American Scott Fauble put on a great show as the first place American runner. He did it in a time of 2:08:52 which is the fastest American time since Meb Keflezighi won the Boston Marathon in 2014. Second place American was Elkanah Kibet with a time of 2:09:07 followed by CJ Albertson in 2:10:23.
Especially when compared to the men! I heard the announcer say that it seemed like the men were running a training run instead of racing a marathon (though, their pace was still quite a bit faster than my fastest race pace!). There were even a couple of miles where the women closed that mile at almost the same pace the men did!
Finishers and the Numbers
So, congrats to the winners of each of the categories in the 2022 Boston Marathon and congrats to every runner that lined up. Of the 25,227 runners that started, there were 408 runners that were not able to finish. I can only imagine how difficult that had to be for those runners, one of whom was an American favorite in the race, Molly Seidel.
Every single wheelchair and handcycle athlete that started did finish, though, so that is certainly a great stat! Speaking of finishing, the following states saw every one of their Boston Marathon runners finish – Alabama (70), Delaware (43), District of Columbia (120), Hawaii (51), Idaho (56), Mississippi (22), Montana (30), Nebraska (55), North Dakota (21), Oklahoma (77), and West Virginia (34). The US territories represented also did almost perfect in their completion rate with Armed Forces Europe, Armed Forces Pacific, Guam, and Virgin Islands all posting 100% completion rates. Only Puerto Rico missed it with just one runner unable to complete the race.
International Runners in the 2022 Boston Marathon
As for international runners, there were 113 countries represented by citizenship and 100 represented by residence. As previously noted, runners who were citizens of Russia or Belarus were allowed to run, provided that they were not residents of those countries. However, their run would not be counted under the country name or flag. In the end, 28 runners that were citizens of those two countries did start and finish.
Here is a fun little stat – there was actually a runner with a citizenship of Antartica that started and finished the race! I had written a post a number of years ago when I saw that there had been 11 children born on the continent and only one had been eligible to claim citizenship. He had not so not sure how this runner claimed citizenship (though there is some United Republics of Antarctica that claims to give out citizenship). But, fun stat anyway!
The countries that had the most citizens representing them at the 2022 Boston Marathon were Canada (1555), United Kingdom (1030), Mexico (487), Brazil (317), Germany (289) followed by several more European nations in the top 10 list.
There was one interesting stat I wanted to point out and explain. Ethiopia had 13 runners that had entered and all of them started but only 9 of them finished (for a completion percentage of 69.2%). The reason for that is that most of them (if not all of them?) were elite/professional runners. Professional runners will often stop racing if something starts to hurt or if it is not shaping up to be their day. This is their business and if they aren’t going to finish in the range they had planned, it is often better to pull out and live to race another day.
Age Groups
There was a single runner in one age/gender group and that was 80+ female. Her name is Jo Ann Mccalister from Kentucky and she finished the race in a time of 5 hours, 23 minutes and 18 seconds. Fantastic and good for her! That is amazing and she placed first in the age group! 🙂
The age/gender group with the highest completion percentage was the Male 45-49 group with 99.4% of runners finishing (2295). The lowest completion percentage group (with more than 50 finishers) was the Male 70-74 group with 92.4% of runners finishing (195). That is pretty amazing that this was the lowest percentage and a great job to that group for showing up so strongly at the finish line!
Bottom Line
The 2022 Boston Marathon was the first one held in Boston on Patriot’s Day in 3 years and the runners had a beautiful day for the race. I am so thankful each of them were able to enjoy the race and I know that all my friends there certainly did.
I hope to toe that line one day myself – just need to get a couple of years older first. 🙂
Featured image courtesy of Boston Athletic Association
