Competitive marathons have a distinct advantage for trans and nonbinary athletes over other, more rigidly segmented sports: When the start gun fires, anyone can participate.
But differences remain, with elite men and women’s participation at all the major marathons still governed by sex assigned at birth.
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Over the last few years, however, a nonbinary division has been added to all seven World Marathon Majors: New York, Boston, Chicago, Tokyo, Berlin, London, and Sydney. That progress is due in large part to the work of one dedicated nonbinary trans runner, Cal Calamia.
The 30-year-old transmasc vegan poet and longtime runner relocated to San Francisco for their transition in 2018 and started their run of marathon activism with that city’s legendary and rowdy Bay-to-Breakers race.
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Calamia led a campaign pressuring organizers to recognize nonbinary participants by allowing them to register in their own division. They won.
They topped that victory by winning the same division days later.
“I was like, ‘Wow, look what we just did. What else can we do?’” Calamia told the Los Angeles Times.
Calamia took their campaign to the San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston marathons, helping win inclusion of a nonbinary division in those races within a year. Following all seven world majors introducing the division, Calamia has earned the top spot in six of them.
The division’s acceptance worldwide has been personal.
“Early in my transition, my goal was, ‘I don’t want to be perceived as a woman. But I’m not quite like these cisgender men, either.’ It took me a lot of work to understand how beautiful occupying that liminal space is instead. Having the nonbinary division in marathons is an extension of that.”
But the runner has faced a few stumbles along the way.
In 2023, the New York City Marathon, the only major race to hand out prize money to nonbinary runners, denied Calamia their $5000 award on a technicality after their division win that year.
Calamia had already obtained an exemption for testosterone use ahead of the Chicago Marathon the month before, but in the aftermath of the New York race, they ran afoul of rules governing participation by the New York Road Runners (NYRR) club, which hands out NYC Marathon prize money. Calamia hadn’t been a member of NYRR long enough, they said.
“They added this stipulation to this division following the registration period. It was not there last year,” Calamia said at the time. “They didn’t do any press release or any coverage on it. They didn’t communicate it out directly, and they are not going back on it.”
At the LA Marathon in Los Angeles last weekend, another division win also left Calamia without cash – but only because race organizers won’t pony it up.
Despite the explosive growth of the division — no registered nonbinary runners crossed the LA finish line in 2021, while 267 did in 2025 — officials sponsoring the marathon haven’t ok’d prize money to accompany the medals.
“At the end of the day, the category is small,” LA Marathon spokesperson Meg Treat told the Times. “And while some of the runners will clock fast times, many of them are going to be finishing alongside our everyday athletes as part of the general field. We’re watching how the competitiveness of that category develops, and we’ll evaluate potential changes.”
Calamia won the division with a 2:49:17 finish.
While they acknowledge – and fight against – the Trump administration’s relentless campaign of trans erasure, Calamia said that both representation and equal treatment matter.
Nonbinary divisions are important, they said, but “I don’t want to feel like a charity entry. I’m a fast runner. I want to be recognized as a strong athlete – not as someone who got the chance to be here because ‘we’re so inclusive.’”
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