finalist vs runner-up

finalist

noun
  • Somebody or something that appears in the final stage of a competition. 

  • A university student during the period of sitting their final examinations (whether or not in their final year of study). 

  • A university student in their final year of study. 

runner-up

noun
  • The person who finishes second, or in any position after the first. 

  • Second favourite. 

How often have the words finalist and runner-up occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )