BOSTON – The Boston Athletic Association is likely to welcome its largest field of non-binary athletes to this year’s Boston Marathon. One hundred sixteen runners are registered to compete in the category, up from 76 in 2025.
This year’s top qualifier, 28-year-old Winter Parts from Towson, Md., shared their goals for Monday and discussed how the growing availability of non-binary racing divisions improves the experience of transgender athletes. A graduate student who is studying astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, they posted this year’s fastest qualifying time (2:28:04), which they ran at the California International Marathon in December, 2025.
Parts has their eye on a personal record (PR) on Monday despite a few minor injuries that interrupted their training cycle early this year. Following those setbacks, they have pulled out some strong races, including a half marathon PR at Project 13.1 in late March.
“Boston is a tough course, so [I] definitely don’t want to go out and be too ambitious there,” they said. “I’m also very weak on uphills, so I really need to be careful.” With the right strategy, they think they could shave about two minutes off their current time. “In the marathon, it’s very easy to get a little bit caught up in what kind of time you should be running … in the early miles. I really need to make sure I’m patient and just go with the flow … I know for me, the best strategy is to have a positive split.”
The time below 2:27:00 would earn Parts the second best non-binary finish to date after Whit Blair who won last year’s race in 2:22:44.
The second and third fastest qualifiers in this year’s race are 30-year-old Daniel Mata Di Giuseppe (2:38:37), a HOKA field experience associate, from Jersey City, New Jersey, and 29-year-old Cal Calamia (2:41:59), an inclusivity activist, poet, educator, and community builder from San Francisco, California. Calamia placed second in the non-binary division in 2023 with a time of 2:51:00. They are the only returning podium finisher.
Mata Di Giuseppe is aiming to run a smart race but is steering away from setting a strict time goal, which they said has led them astray in the past. “This time, my plan is to tackle the course a little more strategically than I did back in 2023 and trust my fitness to carry me through the latter half of the race.” He said a cold and snowy winter kept their mileage low, but he still feels confident. “Since I was able to hit all my workouts without the excess mileage, I am feeling fresh and ready to tackle the course in Boston next week.”
Parts said the non-binary competitors share a sense of camaraderie as they prepare to toe the line together. “Compared to the women’s and men’s categories, we enjoy competing, but I think a lot of us are not too stressed out about who wins,” they said. “Really for everyone, it’s a win to have us keep being represented, have someone get there across the line in first place, have everyone out there putting down fast times. We’ll all be cheering each other on.”
Though non-binary divisions are becoming increasingly common in road racing, they are a relatively new addition to the sport. 2025 was the first year that all of the seven Abbott World Marathon Majors—considered the highest profile marathons around the world—offered a non-binary division. The New York City Marathon was the first to do so in 2021 and the Tokyo Marathon was the last in 2025.
The shift toward greater inclusivity in road racing corresponded with Parts’ transition to post-collegiate running. Parts began running with their family as a child, then went on to compete in track and cross country during high school and college. Afterward, they began training with friends and competing in the road racing scene. “It was really nice to transition from the gendered environment of track races and cross country in college to road races [where they were] starting to introduce non-binary categories,” they said. “It’s been really very cool to see how much things have changed over the past few years.
When they first began running marathons and half marathons, Parts said there were no non-binary options available. Now, if a race does not offer one, Parts will reach out to the race director to ask for it to be added. “If they aren’t going to support that, I can just choose a different race, which is pretty cool,” they said.
Though Parts has found most race directors to be receptive, the path to a more inclusive racing environment has been far from linear. They are currently leading a boycott of track meets run by Princeton University, after the organizers excluded a trans woman from the Larry Ellis Invitational last May. Calamia has also spoken out about discrimination they have endured even among races that offer a non-binary division. Notably, they were denied $5,000 in prize money from the New York City Marathon after winning the race in 2023, due to a technicality added after Calamia registered for the event.
Due to a lack of data on non-binary performances, the Boston Marathon set its non-binary qualification standards to match the women’s qualifying times. Thus, some athletes have faced scrutiny for their participation in the division, with critics suggesting they are using it as a loophole to gain entry.
Parts pushed back on this. “It’s very easy for conservative people to put out the image of trans runners trying to take women’s spots or just trying to get money or awards or access to the Boston Marathon,” they said. “I have not met a single trans person who is like that yet. The only person I’ve met who does that sort of thing is a cis man.”
They also discussed some of the challenges trans people face in athletics. “For myself, I definitely have dealt with the struggle of my trans identity coming into conflict with goals as a runner.” While Parts wants to physically transition through bottom surgery and hormone therapy, they know that will come with consequences for their performance. “I’m not ready to get slower yet,” they said. “There’s a lot of striking a balance between what you want for your mental health and your happiness and what you want for your body, what kind of trade-offs you’re willing to make over time. I think a lot of people don’t understand that about the trans experience”
The 2026 Boston Marathon will take place Monday April 20. It kicks off in Hopkinton with the men’s wheelchair division just after 9am.
This article is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, sign up for BINJ’s free weekly newsletter at https://binj.news/signup/.
