High ranking

The Košice Peace Marathon is ranked 11th in Europe at the end of November and is very close to the Top 20 in the world.

A closer look at the European Top 20 shows that races from 13 countries made it into this elite group, with Germany holding four positions and Spain two. Slovakia is part of this ranking thanks to Košice, which is especially remarkable given that it matches the representation of traditional marathon powerhouses like Great Britain and France.

With such a diverse mix of countries and host cities, various comparisons naturally come to mind. One of them may be the demographic and economic context — the environment in which these European marathons are organized.

If we take into account the population size of each city and the performance of the country measured by GDP, we can see that Košice would rank first in such a hypothetical Top 20 Europe list.

This perspective shows that excellent results are not always tied solely to a generous budget or nearly unlimited human resources.