Abstract
The aspect of participation and performance trends in marathon running has been investigated mainly in marathons held in the United States of America (e.g., “New York City Marathon,” “Boston Marathon”), but not for the fastest course in the world, the “Berlin Marathon” held in Berlin, Germany. This study aimed to examine trends in participation and performance in the “Berlin Marathon” on all its previous 46 editions from 1974 to 2019, the largest dataset ever studied in this event with 696,225 finishers (after data cleaning). Athletes in all age groups increased their participation, except for male athletes aged 20–49 years and athletes of both sexes above 79 years of age. This overall increase in participation was more pronounced in women, but still, there are more men than women participating in “Berlin Marathon” nowadays. All age group athletes decreased their performance across years overall, whereas the top ten recreational athletes improved their performance over the years. Our findings improved the knowledge about the evolution of male and female marathoners across calendar years, especially for the fastest marathon race in the world, the “Berlin Marathon.”
Highlights
The inaugural modern marathon event was first held during the 1896 Summer Olympic games and was refined to the official distance of 42.195 km for the 1908 Olympic Games in London (Burfoot, 2007; Wilcock, 2008)
The total number of athletes ever registered in the 46 editions of the “Berlin-Marathon” between 1974 and 2019 was 884,927 finishers
The number of athletes participating in the “Berlin-Marathon” increased from only 236 men and 8 women in 1974 to 28,373 men and 12,268 women in 2018 (Figure 1)
Summary
The inaugural modern marathon event was first held during the 1896 Summer Olympic games and was refined to the official distance of 42.195 km for the 1908 Olympic Games in London (Burfoot, 2007; Wilcock, 2008). Participation and Performance in “Berlin Marathon” 1974–2019 finish lines all over the world (The State of Running, 2019). A total of 12% of those finishers were marathoners (The State of Running, 2019), and most of them were age group athletes (Rüst et al, 2013; Lara et al, 2014)
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