Runners who were facing long odds of snagging a qualifying bib for the Boston Marathon got a lifeline Wednesday. The Boston Athletic Association announced that 1,000 entries for qualifiers would be granted by drawing for the 2027 race.
In past years, qualification alone has not been enough to secure entry to Boston. Instead, qualifiers not only had to beat a qualifying time, based on their age and gender, but they also had to best that time by a significant amount, as the race accepts the fastest qualifiers first. That created a cutoff every year—typically around five minutes, but always a moving target—and it left thousands of people who had run a qualifying time without a bib.
Now, those qualifiers who beat their time by any amount—or matched it exactly—will be entered into a drawing for one of 1,000 bibs.
In a phone call with Runner’s World on July 23, Jack Fleming, president and CEO of the BAA, and Chris Lotsbom, director of race communications and media, explained that the drawing had been a plan several years in the making. Race officials wanted to be able to offer a significant number of entries through a drawing—not just a handful—and they can do that as they have been able to better understand who was registering and who was showing up on race day.
They expect about 25,500 qualifiers, between the cutoff and the drawing.
The BAA is not reducing entries from any other population of runners. It’s planning to accept the same number from the cutoff, and it’s not reducing invitational or charity entries.
They were able to “find efficiencies,” Fleming said, by looking at the number of no-shows each year (typically 8 to 9 percent) and people who defer because of pregnancy. The 2027 race will be the first that uses the “downhill index” for qualifying marathons, and officials expect that will reduce the number of qualifiers, although they’re not yet clear how many people that will affect.
“What we are working on internally is just optimizing the process from registration to lining up on the starting line, because we’ve gotten better at that,” Fleming said.
They’ve absorbed the message about qualifiers’ disappointment.
For the past several years, the team has been evaluating ways to accept more qualifiers. They didn’t want to tighten the qualifying times again; they did that just two years ago. And they didn’t want to simply lower the cutoff.
“We’ve heard the responses over the last number of years that folks, they’ve earned their BQ, but if it’s by five seconds or two seconds, then they feel like they have no chance because of the cutoff,” Lotsbom said.
“So on one side, we find that the BQ is valuable and it means something to many runners, and we want that to continue. But we also know that with the qualifying times and the cutoff lately, it’s been somewhat of a moving goalpost. So the introduction of this qualifier selection we felt was a good opportunity to provide that chance. That if you've earned that BQ, you have a chance to get to the starting line.”
Last year about 9,000 Boston applicants with qualifying times were turned away, although certainly those who qualified by only a few seconds wouldn’t have bothered applying. Still, Lotsbom and Fleming put the chances of runners getting in by this new drawing at about one in 10.
“We were looking at the different possibilities, and along with maintaining the integrity of the qualification process, we wanted it to be simple, and we approached it with the idea of how can we keep someone’s hope of running the Boston Marathon alive,” Fleming said.
Drawing winners will be notified in September, shortly after those who beat the cutoff.
The plan, Lotsbom said, would be to announce the cutoff, and then anybody who did not meet that would be eligible for the random selection. The results of the drawing would be known within a short time after the cutoff time is released. He didn’t want to put an exact number of days on it.
The BAA team that verifies qualification times has a bigger job this year.
In the past, the verification team would check the times of the fastest runners first, knowing the cutoff would likely eliminate the entries of those who qualified for Boston by just a few seconds. Now, with the drawing, the team has to verify everyone.
Lotsbom encouraged people who have run a Boston qualifying time and think they might apply to run the race to go to the Athletes’ Village portion of the website now and submit that time for verification.
This is not a test for a broader drawing.
Online, runners have speculated that Boston’s new policy would lead to a drawing for nonqualifiers, too. The Chicago and New York City marathons have drawings, even though the odds of getting in that way are exceedingly slim.
Boston, for now, is not going that route. “We do not see a drawing for non-qualifiers in our near-term future,” Lotsbom wrote in an email. “We are focused on efficiencies, and optimizing our participant experience on race day.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
