Most people will never run a marathon. Then there’s Adrian Decunto.
Decunto has not only run the six most popular marathons in the world, he’s done them all seven times each.
“If my body allowed me, I would run a marathon every week,” he said. His dedication may be singular, but his interest in running the world’s “Majors,” as these races are known, is part of a much larger movement.
Interest in running has never been higher, fueled by the rise of marathons, run clubs and social media influencers. That running boom has pushed demand for entry into the world’s premier races to unprecedented levels.
At the center of the frenzy is the Abbott World Marathon Majors, a circuit of seven of the sport’s most coveted races: London, New York, Berlin, Chicago, Tokyo, Boston and, most recently, Sydney. For many runners, completing all six of the original races has become the sport’s ultimate achievement, a feat that comes with a giant doughnut-shaped “six-star” medal and bragging rights for completing the equivalent of the “Amazing Race” for marathoners.
More than 22,000 people have completed the medal, according to Abbott, and hundreds of thousands more are chasing it.
“There’s just something so heightened about that experience and that accomplishment that is such a draw,” said Rob Dalto, a 37-year-old tech executive who ran each of the Majors the past two years and plans to do it again in 2025. “When you have an experience like you have at the New York City Marathon, it’s so much bigger than just yourself. You know you’re part of something much bigger.”
Dalto has become a World Marathon Majors influencer, building sizable followings on TikTok and Instagram through his journey of running the series every year. He’s just one of the obsessives and influencers who have made the Majors a burgeoning cultural phenomenon.
The increasing popularity of the series is clear, attracting celebrities like musician Harry Styles, who ran the series’ Tokyo and Berlin marathons this year, along with hundreds of thousands of others.
Demand for entry into the races has become so high that it has fueled an industry around access. Beyond the handful of guaranteed entries for ultrafast runners or charity fundraisers, one of the only ways to secure a spot is through marathon tour companies that sell bibs bundled with travel packages for thousands of dollars. Other hopefuls can try their chances in ultracompetitive lotteries put on by six of the seven marathons, but chances are slim. The New York City Marathon admitted just 3% of lottery applicants last year — lower odds than getting into an Ivy League college.
As the circuit’s popularity has skyrocketed, figuring out how to even be accepted to the races has become a major challenge, and what was once a coalition of marathons tied together by a shoestring has had to figure out how to scale for increasing demand.
Humble beginnings
The Majors weren’t always this way.
When the series debuted in 2006, its focus was exclusively on appealing to elite runners, offering $500,000 in prize money for the top man and woman over a two-year cycle.
That idea grew out of conversations among race directors who had begun informally sharing best practices, which turned into collective action.
Before the group debuted the circuit, for example, its members worked together to petition for more stringent doping procedures from the International Amateur Athletic Federation, now known as World Athletics, said Carey Pinkowski, the longtime director of the Chicago Marathon.
Mark Milde, the longtime race director of the Berlin Marathon, remembered that the inspiration for the series came partly in response to a sponsor’s attempt to use results from major races to crown its own “runner of the year.”
“We didn’t like the idea,” he said. “This was kind of the initiator to do something together.” In 2004, he said, he and directors from four other marathons around the world got together in New York City ahead of the New York City Marathon to come up with a scoring system to determine the best marathon runner.
In the beginning, Milde said, the planning fell to the team of race directors. Now, the Abbott World Marathon Majors is an independent corporate entity from the marathons themselves, with its own CEO and staff. Many of the race directors sit on that group’s board of directors.
But it didn’t grow into what it is today overnight.
Milde said it took several years to convince the other race directors of the value of investing more deeply in participation from everyday runners.
“We thought, OK, it makes sense to reach out to the normal runner, or the average runner, however you want to call it, and to do something for them,” Milde said.
The investment would turn into one of the defining elements of the series.
In 2011, the World Marathon Majors introduced a five-star certificate, with signatures from all five race directors of the original World Marathon Majors group, awarded to everyday participants who completed all five marathons.
That year, Milde remembers, they gave out just seven.
But the idea of appealing to everyday runners, not just elites, was the beginning of what would become the hallmark of the major marathon circuit, ballooning in a matter of years into a phenomenon, and becoming a fundamental aspect of the growth of marathons over the next 15 years.
Eliud Kipchoge, the most famous living marathoner in the world and the first person to complete a marathon in under two hours, has won the London Marathon four times and the Berlin Marathon five times. Despite his elite status, he praised the Majors’ efforts to cater to everyday runners. “They allow a huge number of runners to register and participate, and I think that’s what made the World Marathon Majors grow in a big way, because people actually are going around the world, running a marathon experience in a city,” Kipchoge said. “And that’s what has made the Marathon Majors beautiful, because now everybody actually is involved. Everybody wants to run a lot of Marathon Majors. Any serious athlete has run nearly all of them.”
Growing pains
The current popularity of marathons has arisen from a concoction of factors, veteran runners and industry experts say. Social media and influencers have exposed millions of new people to the idea of marathon running. The conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic inspired many people to escape their homes and apartments through running. Interest in health and wellness has continued to expand. And for many, the idea of running a marathon, or a series of marathons, has become a life goal.
Appetite for the races has become insatiable.
The London Marathon received more than 1.1 million applications this year for 50,000 to 60,000 spots.
The increasing demand has made it harder to secure entry into the races. Mike Brydges, a six-star finisher who has built a social media following with his running content, said dollar amounts asked from participants who raise funds for charities has increased in recent years.
“The amount goes up and up and up every year because of the amount of people running, and it becomes out of reach to them,” Brydges said. “And that upsets me, because the running community, in my opinion, should be as inclusive as possible, and we should not just necessarily celebrate the people that get into these races because they can afford it.”
To try to alleviate some of that pressure, races and the World Marathon Majors organization have taken several steps, said Abbott World Marathon Majors CEO Dawna Stone. “Growth is fabulous for our sport. But again, we can only grow the current Majors so much,” Stone said. “You just have to figure out a way to be able to accommodate more people, but you need to do it safely, in a way that it’s still as enjoyable as ever.”
Stone said that in addition to adding capacity, which appears to have happened by adding several thousand participants to each race per year, the organization is also working to promote less popular races to alleviate pressure. But many racers want the prestige and experience of running a World Marathon Majors- designated race. In response, the organization has embarked on an expansion plan. In addition to Sydney, the World Marathon Majors has said it plans to add at least two more races to its portfolio. Cape Town, South Africa, and Shanghai are potential candidates.
“Adding one in Africa and adding one in China opens it up to more runners,” Stone said. “But it also brings a Major to a location where there was never a Major before. So even if someone decides not to do the journey, or can’t do the journey, it’s still about bringing a quality race, a Major, to that neck of the world.” Stone says the decision to add more races to the circuit isn’t off the table. But the growth plan, even as it may help create more options for racers, has created controversy among racers who have expressed concerns about the expense of chasing the Majors.
“The World Marathon Majors has become more of a cash grab because they still have this six-star program,” Brydges said. “But they’re going to have this nine-star program, and that, in and of itself, I feel like is a way for them to be like, ‘If you don’t want to spend the money on these other three races, you can still spend the money on these other six races and get another medal. But if you want to give us more money, you can get these other three races and get another medal.’”
Stone says Abbott, the health care company that is the primary sponsor of Abbott World Marathon Majors, does not receive funds from that organization, and that the Abbott World Marathon Majors does not provide funds to individual marathons, which are independent financial entities.
Stone said many people don’t realize that the World Marathon Majors has its own business to run.
“We’re a business — in order to hire people and to fly people all the way across the world and give out medals, we have to have a great business,” she said.
Chris Miller, Abbott’s vice president of brand strategy and innovation, explained that for the company, which began sponsoring the marathon circuit in 2015, the benefit of the partnership comes from visibility. When Abbott embarked on the partnership, it was looking for large-scale participatory sports.
“This is really the only sport that you can participate at the same time, the same playing field, as the elites, right? So you can’t go out on the baseball field or the football field or soccer pitch at the same time as the stars are playing, but you’re running on that same course right behind them,” Miller said. “Ultimately, it’s really about awareness of, ‘Do you know who Abbott is?’ And then, ‘Do you trust them? How do you think of them?’”
Miller says that Abbott has helped the races fine-tune and grow, contributing funds for prizes, volunteers for the races and operational and logistical assistance. He says the organization is in close contact with the race directors, and that increasing demand for bibs has been a hot topic of discussion.
In recent years, Abbott has debuted “Team Abbott,” which allows runners with inspiring health stories to apply for bibs to the Majors through Abbott directly.
Regardless of rising costs and the increasing difficulty of getting in, Brydges says he’ll keep running the World Marathon Majors.
“It’s not going to stop me from running these races, because I just love the atmosphere and the courses, but it makes it seem like they’re just going to keep adding on and on and on, and it’s going to get to a place where it becomes so expensive that … I’m still in credit card debt from Berlin in 2022. I’m still paying that off.”
“If you’re traveling to go to an Abbott World Marathon, it usually takes a divine drive. You’re going there for a deeper purpose,” Dalto said.
Decunto, who has completed the Majors circuit more times than any runner, says he can see the expansion go two ways. Adding marathons “runs the risk of diluting the value — these marathons are not as good, as far as I know, as the original Majors,” he said. He described what he considered quality issues in Sydney, from crowd size to the availability of roadside nutrition and water. This year, Cape Town’s marathon sparked significant controversy after it was canceled the day of the race. Officials said intense winds damaged race infrastructure. On the other hand, Decunto said, “having a marathon in Sydney, in Shanghai and in Cape Town, gives the opportunity to have a close-by marathon to people that otherwise would be too far away.”
Decunto, based in Argentina, noted that none of the implemented or proposed additions to the circuit bring a World Marathon Major meaningfully closer to him in South America.
But that’s not a problem for him. He’s turned his expensive hobby into a self-sustaining business, running a marathon travel company that sells trips and guaranteed entries to the Abbott World Marathon Majors.
Being an official tour operator allows for Decunto to access bibs to major races even if he doesn’t secure entry through the lottery or other means. But he says even without it, he’d still be racing the Majors. “The Majors are super special — they are A-plus in every single aspect you can think of. So that’s why it’s a different experience. It’s a superior kind of feeling,” Decunto said. “There’s something that money cannot buy, which is the spirit, and no matter how much money you put into London, Chicago, New York, Boston, it’s the people that are making the marathon.”
