  We study the crowding of near-extreme events in the time gaps between
successive finishers in major international marathons. Naively, one might
expect these gaps to become progressively larger for better-placing finishers.
While such an increase does indeed occur from the middle of the finishing pack
down to approximately 20th place, the gaps saturate for the first 10-20
finishers. We give a probabilistic account of this feature. However, the data
suggests that the gaps have a weak maximum around the 10th place, a feature
that seems to have a sociological origin.
