And the Friday afternoon news dump comes out:
http://www.letsrun.com/news/2015/05/the-lehigh-valley-marathon-is-not-going-to-disqualify-mike-rossi-the-viral-boston-marathon-dad-because-no-one-reported-wrongdoing-as-the-race-took-place/
No DQ "unless additional conclusive information" comes out.
In our minds, the statement by the marathon organizers is logically flawed. Imagine if the police in this country weren't allow to charge people with burglary simply because it wasn't reported while it was happening - crime would be even more of a problem than it already is.
When one considers that it's physiologically improbable to say the least (some would say impossible) that Mr. Rossi was even capable of running 3:11:45, given his personal bests at other distances which all equate to a marathon over 3:30, with the fact that he wasn't seen in a single photo on the course, the burden of proof should have shifted to Mr. Rossi to provide some shred of evidence that he ran the race (GPS data, photos, statements from fellow competitors, spectators or family members, etc.) or was at least physically capable of something close to a 3:11:45 (training logs, GPS data, statements from training partners), particularly when one considers that his own contemporaneous statements contradicted his initial explanation that his other PRs were much slower simply because he was injured or not going all out in many of his shorter races.
The integrity of our beloved sport is at stake. We've spent much of the last few weeks researching and writing our own story on Mr. Rossi that lays out the evidence against Mr. Rossi. We were going to publish the story tonight which was going to ask for a DQ.
We were waiting to put it out as we wanted to give Lehigh Valley and Mr. Rossi a chance to comment. Our email to Mr. Rossi was met with a reply by a lawyer who has been "retained to investigate and prosecute any and all claims of defamation arising from false allegations of competition cheating made against my client." And then we got the statement from Lehigh Valley.
We still think our story is well researched and well written. We will publish the story early next week as we don't want it to get lost as a Friday afternoon news dump.. In our minds, the evidence is indeed conclusive that Mike Rossi - the viral Boston Marathon dad - is a marathon cheat and should have not been on starting line in Boston and we hope the organizers consider it as "additional conclusive information."
