BGR Completions – 2020 update

Bob Wightman has just released the figures for Bob Graham Round (BGR) registrations, completions, male/female split, direction of travel, etc. for 2020, which make interesting reading, and that I have commented on before. [https://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showthread.php?24761-BGR-2019-summary&p=657211#post657211]

I have updated my spreadsheet, and the graphs of several aspects of the data, which are illustrated below with a couple of comments on each.

This first graph shows the data just for completions since 1971. The black line is the actual numbers completing, which was at its highest ever level in 2019, although not surprisingly it was another downturn in 2020. The red line is the trend line which is obviously up (after recovering from the Foot and Mouth blip of 2001) and the blue is the moving mean, also trending upwards.

More recently figures for registrations and completions have been published, allowing analysis of completion percentages. The graph above is of the last 9 years, showing upward trends in registrations and completions (these figures are for males and females combined), but interestingly NOT an increasing percentage actually completing. It invariably hovers either side of 50%. The next two graphs look at the male/female data.

The men’s data pretty much follows the pattern of the total data (there are still many more men than women involved). 2020 shows a dip in all three data sets for the year, after all going up in 2019. The completion rate of 51.32% for men is the third highest since I have been looking at this (the highest was 54.95% in 2019). The male completions, at 78, is the third highest it has ever been in one year.

The women’s completions (red) were the equal lowest in this 9 year period, but that is mostly because the registrations was the second lowest in this period. The percentage lines (green) are at the top of this graph as the numbers are higher than either the registrations or completions, and had previously shown an upward trend, but this year’s percentage of 37.5% completions bring that trend line down. Admittedly from a small sample size.

My original analysis was in an earlier blog [BGR completion rate is 42%], with a follow-up on women’s completions [Women’s completions at BGR]. Both were based on data up to and including 2018.