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Marathon player

Bagsensei

Senior Member
Japanese
Hello.
Would you consider if I say marathon player as other way of saying athlete? Students have difficulty in pronouncing athlete.
Hi bagsensei,

I'm afraid it doesn't work. If the athlete runs marathons, he or she is a marathon runner, not a marathon player. The term "marathon player" makes me think of someone who plays poker or video games or some such thing for hours and hours.👁 Smile :)
Thank you so much for your helpful info theartichoke. So, I should marathon runner.
Thank you so much for your helpful info theartichoke. So, I should marathon runner.

You can use marathon runner, but only for athletes who actually run marathons. From your original question, it sounded like you were looking for an all-purpose alternative to "athlete"--and an "athlete" can refer to someone who practices any sport.
Keep in mind that a marathon, to be precise, is only a race over a distance of 42.2 km/26.2 miles. While non-runners sometimes call any long race a marathon, runners care deeply about using this term precisely. (Longer races are called ultramarathons. The shortest common ultramarathon distance is 50 km/31.1 miles.)
Last edited by a moderator:
You can use marathon runner, but only for athletes who actually run marathons. From your original question, it sounded like you were looking for an all-purpose alternative to "athlete"--and an "athlete" can refer to someone who practices any sport.

Im sorry to confuse you with my question. Yes, I was referring to a person who does the marathon. And, I was thinking if I could use "marathon player" instead of marathon athlete. But then, thank you for your ideas, it is now clear to me that it is not possible to use "marathon player". So, it could be marathon runner and the most common is marathon athlete as sdgraham mentioned.
Thank you very much.
Athlete is by far the most common term. You're not doing students a favor to allow them to avid it.

thank you for your help sdgraham.
It will be useful for your students to learn how to say 'athlete', however we usually call people who run marathon marathon .

We use athlete to say that someone participates in sports, without specifying the name of the sport. For instance, "Olympic athletes" includes everyone who competes in the Olympics, no matter what the sport is. We can also talk about marathon athletes, but that it less common.
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