Expanding Into Irrelevance? World Marathon Majors Expansion Is Ill-Conceived Unless They Do This

To play devil’s advocate…
It seems possible to add majors and keep the focus on elite racing.
Traditionally, elite marathoners run 2 marathons per year at peak fitness. With super shoes, it seems reasonable to me that elites could begin to stretch that to 3 since they can recover more quickly with the shoes and better nutrition during races.
If all elite marathoners did this, there are 50% more elite marathon entrants per year. By that logic, WMM could increase the number of races per year by 50% (from 6 to 9).
The catch though: they’d need to space the competitions out throughout the year. Since the spring and fall schedules are already filled (spring: Tokyo [march], London [april], Boston [april] fall: Berlin [septmeber] Chicago [october], New York [november], they’d need to have the added races in the summer or winter. Weather would be a concern unless… the races are in places with different seasonal weather patterns than the US/Europe.
Sydney 2025 appears to be on august 31. Average temperature in Sydney in august: high 65, low 48. Seems like solid weather for marathoning. And adequate spacing.
Cape Town (potential addition down the line per Rojo’s article) is currently in October. They could move that race to July (July average high/low in Cape Town: 66/51). A little warm but not terrible. And 2+ months after the WMM spring marathons.
Now, shanghai marathon was in early December in 2024. Maybe they move than one to early January (average high low temp 50/38).
with that schedule, think it’s reasonable elites could have a 3 marathon per year schedule of, for example:
Tokyo (march) - Cape Town (July) - Chicago (October)
OR
London (Apr) - sydney (august) - New York (november)
OR
shanghai (Jan) - boston (Apr) - Berlin (September)
etc etc
hell, with that schedule CJ Albertson could run all 9

Key point: get elites to run 3 majors per year and space out the races. That allows more WMM without watering down the fields

I have no idea what majors you are watching. This past weekend NYC was on ESPN2. Others are also broadcast either on local television stations and available on cable, or on some other national feed. Yes, if you are in the US you may not get the London marathon except on FloTrack. But if you are in Europe you get it via other feeds. You think it does not matter? Try getting a winning lottery ticket to London. Now try getting into, say, San Francisco. Why do you think London is so much harder? Elite racers and the TV coverage they draw makes a big difference.

One man's opinion here but I now lost interest in going for the majors medals. I have a few completed and it might have been a fun goal - but not if I don't know how far it will keep expanding and if it means travelling to places I don't care to visit.

I have all 6 so I'll be there at Sydney,just waiting on seeing how they are doing registration, hopefully an easy GFA like Chicago to start with.

You're quite wrong. The idea of the series as an elite competition *series* is known by next to no one and cared about by fewer than that. People don't travel to Tokyo or Sydney, and they don't pay crazy charity or travel package fees, to run because of whatever elites are there. The vast, vast majority of people doing the majors don't really care about the elites at all. They do it because of the medal and because other runners are trying to complete all 6 (now 7). London is much harder to get into simply because it has "major" status (and b/c of the qualities that earned it major status), compared with other marathons. Your claim that "elite racers and the TV coverage they draw make a big difference" is completely unsupported. You're just making this up.

The Fukuoka Marathon you may be referring to no longer exists. The Fukuoka Open Marathon Championship, which was an elite-only Men’s Marathon was discontinued after its 75th running in 2021. A new version of the Fukuoka Marathon was formed with open entry to everyone however it is geared more to the masses and does not attract many of the best runners that the Fukuoka Open Marathon Championship once did.

I’ll give myself a pat on the back here as Kipchoge and Hassan are both slated for London - Sydney - New York this year…

Cities love them for the tourism showcasing. Which means tourism and screen grants etc.