Boston Marathon Deferrals: Here Are the Facts

With all due respect to winners Sharon Cherop and Wesley Korir, the big story for many runners in Boston this weekend was the weather. With temperatures forecast to climb well into the 80s on race day, many of the nearly 27,000 registered entrants were starting to sweat well before Monday.

So when Boston Marathon officials announced Saturday that they would give runners the option of deferring to the 2013 race, things really got hot. Online and on the ground, everyone was asking: How many runners will defer? Will this affect my chances of getting a spot next year? And how will this work, anyhow? What a mess!

Compounding the confusion, several sources reported -- erroneously -- that as many as 4,000 or 5,000 runners this year had deferred to 2013.

Not true.

Here's the scoop, directly from Boston Athletics Association Communications Director Marc Davis, whom we spoke with moments ago. (Answers are not direct quotes, unless noted as such.)

How many runners have deferred to 2013, really? None at all, yet.

Who is eligible for a deferral? The only runners who will be eligible to defer are those who:

1. Picked up their bibs for the 2012 race -- or "virtually" picked them up, meaning they contacted the B.A.A. personally to have their bibs set aside for them; and 2. Did not start the race.

According to Davis, 427 runners meet those two criteria.

How and when will these 427 runners be able to take advantage of the deferral? The B.A.A. will contact them, most likely via email. Davis said he wasn't sure yet exactly when that would happen. It's important to note that this figure represents not the number of deferrals, but the number of people who will be given the option of deferring.

Will those runners who opt to defer need to pay the entry fee again to race in 2013? Yes.

Why are some people reporting that 4,000 or more runners have deferred, or may do so? Presumably they took two real figures -- 26,716 runners registered for today's marathon, versus 22,426 who actually started the race -- and concluded that the difference (4,290) equaled the number who could defer, or already had.

That's simply not so, said Davis, who pointed out that a certain percentage of registered runners don't make it to the starting line in any given race, regardless of the weather, due to things like food poisoning, family emergencies, injuries, and so on.

Davis said that the number of runners who did show up and run today was really quite high -- especially given the drumbeat of ominous weather warnings. More than 98% of those runners who did pick up their bibs, Davis said, started the race as planned.

How many ultimately finished? That's TBD.

UPDATE, 4/17 The B.A.A. website is reporting that 21,554 runners finished the marathon.

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