A Record For the Western States Lottery

Unsurprisingly the numbers of lottery applicants and tickets in the lottery for the 2025 Western States break all records. I am linking here to Mel Macfarlane’s Substack who shared the news in her Trail Snacks Issue 31, as the Western States race director Craig Thornley still posts these stats on X/Twitter:

We have exceeded our record number of lottery applicants and ticket counts with registration open for another 8 days. Over 9400 applicants with more than 65,000 tickets. The drawing is on Dec 7. We will start exactly 369 runners in June.

Again, these are unsurprising numbers and only put more pressure on the Western States board to try to figure out how to continue to respond to the growing interest in our sport. What’s the more interesting part here is that WS still uses X/Twitter as communication tool. At a time when even Keith Dunn, the unofficial/official Barkley Marathons spokesperson, who had used Twitter exclusively during the event over the past few years, has moved on to BlueSky.