Two of the fastest marathon courses on earth, two very different races. Here's every stat, side by side, to help you pick.
Indicative — based on GPX data. Both courses normalised to start at 0m.
✓ marks the better number on that stat.
Athens is the original marathon route, run from the town of Marathon to Athens along a genuinely uphill course (335m of gain, net +60m climbing). New York is the biggest marathon in the world by finishers, a five-borough point-to-point with its own significant elevation (275m of gain) but a very different, more evenly rolling profile.
New York is ballot-entry with a field approaching 60,000; Athens is open registration and considerably smaller at around 19,000 finishers. If the historical, symbolic route matters most, Athens is the only real answer; if scale, crowd noise and the five-borough tour is what you're after, New York is hard to beat.