When runners Cheat.... (Read 398 times)

A couple years at the University of Okoboji Marathon there was cheater.  The course is short out and back followed by a circle around  Lake Okoboji.  There was a woman who I passed as I was coming back on the out and back at about mile 3 .  Nobody passed me during the race and then I was quite surprised when I passed her again at mile 22 or 23.  I thought it was weird but didn't think much about  it.  However at the finish one of the guys who finished behind me mentioned that he passed her late in the race and she never passed him either.  He was pretty mad and went to the race director to complain about her.  The director then asked me about her and asked several others who passed her late in the race, and we all told him that we were ahead of her early in the race and she never passed us.  He checked the mid course chip times and she was missing at them.

 

She was the first woman to cross the finish line and I saw her with her family before the award ceremony. I  asked her what her daughter thought of how she got the finisher's medal.  She gave me a strange look but didn't say anything.  However when they announced the winner for the women's race she started to head to get the award until she heard someone else's name as the winner.  She got a real mad look on her face, gave me a nasty stare and her family left angrily.  I thought it kind of funny; she got what she deserved. It wasn't me who brought her to the attention of the race director but I am glad the other guy did, and I probably will if I see something similar in the future.

Nice.  I'd turn her in too.

Years back I did turn in an elite woman for cheating at a major road race.  On turns she would cut up onto the sidewalk and tangent across the corner as much as any buildings would let her; this would cut off as much as 30 yards are so the way some of the corners were set up.  She had to cut through course marking cones to do this.  I told her after the first few that I would have her DQ'd if she continued but she did...so I did.

Apparently she claimed they did that all the time "over there" (ie Africa) but I didn't see any other foreign elites doing it.

I remember that new yorker article! I read it three times because it was so weirdly fascinating. But if you want true, die-hard cray, you have to check out the letsrun thread referred to in the article. It's the combination of litton's bizarre antics and the rabid letsrun detectives that make the story so compelling.

 

I bet it takes me a week to get through it all...but fascinating!

I don't think it is cheating if you ran the wrong route in an attempt to run the correct route.  If this is cheating then everyone in the ten mile race at the Twin Cities Marathon this year cheated.  It seems that the lead vehicle for the ten mile race made a wrong turn and cut off .14 mile from the route.  Everyone followed the lead vehicle and ran the wrong, short course, but none of them cheated.  The lead vehicle screwed up.

Dave, seems like a long time ago when you were running "mid-21's!"  Crazy fast running you are doing these days.  Not to mention the miles, 100+ in 1 week?!  Good stuff.  PS.  See you at the Seashore 50K, even though I am not well prepared.  You should be shooting for a fast PR?  (No cutting the second loop!) :-)

Also, I somehow had never heard the Rosie Ruiz cheating story from 1980.  Had to go back and catch up on that one.  Appears in her case, after she was caught she took to selling drugs + some embezzling from an employer, then faded from the public eye.  Remembered only for her Boston running fraud...

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosie-ruiz-fakes-boston-marathon-win

.

 

Not sure I equate this with cheating unless you take some hardware that belongs to others.

I raced a duathlon years ago where some dude took 2nd place in the women's field. I'm guessing it was a registration error, but it bumped a legitimate entrant from the podium (I was 5th in my AG and 6th OA prior to correction of results, so it didn't have any effect on my medal contention, but I knew it did on the woman ahead of me. And 5th OA is still a nicer placement than 6th). Once photos came out it was easy to verify that he was definitely not in possession of 2 X chromosomes. I contacted the race organizer and they'd apparently not had any inkling that anything was amiss (in spite of the 2nd place participant having a very masculine name, which is what caught my attention and triggered my sleuthing) and were hoping to try to rectify the awards situation.

I'm guessing he wasn't blatantly cheating, but I can't figure out why a guy would place in the women's results and not inform organizers of the error right from the get-go.

 

How about if the race had a rule against wearing headphones?  I was in a marathon once and I was running with the woman leader and so we had two bicyclists riding along with her.  We were going on an out and back stretch over the last 8 miles when one of the bicyclists saw a person probably six miles behind us who was wearing headphones.  He got all upset and wanted to turn around and catch to them to get their number so they could be DQed.  The other bicyclist and the three of us running together finally talked him out it, explaining that the person was way back in the pack, not anywhere near placing and no harm was being done with the runner with headphones.  We finally convinced him to stay when we pointed out that his job was to ride with the lead woman runner and he shouldn't leave her.

 

Is this worth disqualifying the runner?

Seems excessive. Headphone-wearers may be annoying but do not gain a competitive advantage. Unless it is explicitly stated in the rules that headphones are prohibited and violators will be disqualified. And probably also announced at the start, since I think that would be pretty unusual.

 

I raced a duathlon years ago where some dude took 2nd place in the women's field. I'm guessing it was a registration error, but it bumped a legitimate entrant from the podium (I was 5th in my AG and 6th OA prior to correction of results, so it didn't have any effect on my medal contention, but I knew it did on the woman ahead of me. And 5th OA is still a nicer placement than 6th). Once photos came out it was easy to verify that he was definitely not in possession of 2 X chromosomes. I contacted the race organizer and they'd apparently not had any inkling that anything was amiss (in spite of the 2nd place participant having a very masculine name, which is what caught my attention and triggered my sleuthing) and were hoping to try to rectify the awards situation.

 

I'm guessing he wasn't blatantly cheating, but I can't figure out why a guy would place in the women's results and not inform organizers of the error right from the get-go.

I did a 5k at a local high school last year, it was raising money for the American Cancer Society in honor of one of their teachers. A large percentage of the participants were affiliated with the school.  First place OA got a tablet, AG winners got fitness bands and 2nd & 3rd OA got some sort of techie gadget. The OA "female" winner was a high school boy who I guess ran using a female's bib. He actually went up to claim the award! Left a bad taste in my mouth for that high school, which is actually one of the top ranked ones in the state, and the race management company.,

 

Seems excessive. Headphone-wearers may be annoying but do not gain a competitive advantage. Unless it is explicitly stated in the rules that headphones are prohibited and violators will be disqualified. And probably also announced at the start, since I think that would be pretty unusual.

I've run races that disqualified cheaters with headphones. But most seem to not care. On the one hand, that kind of condones ignoring rules and cheating for convenience. On the other hand, it is realistically acknowledging that most of us do not care, just as we don't care about people who break traffic laws.