In “Marathon Man” (p. 40), Mark Singer investigates the strange controversy surrounding Kip Litton, a small-town dentist who has allegedly repeatedly cheated in marathons. “Since the early nineties, technology has made it possible to clock runners with precision and to track them at measured intervals,” Singer writes, but Litton, who was on a self-professed mission to complete marathons in under three hours in all fifty states, appears to have exploited the running community’s faith in those systems to fraudulently win, or place in, various races. Litton has “become a consuming object of contempt” in the running community, much of which has played out in the blogosphere. “For a man or a woman of any age, a marathon performance of under three hours is considered a mark of distinction,” Singer writes. Litton, who until the fall of 2010 maintained a Web site chronicling his races and his mission to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (his son suffers from the disease), claimed to have finished twenty marathons in under three hours. However, a few race directors began to notice that he was only present in photographs from the beginnings and ends of their marathons, and never along the course. Furthermore, he often appeared in different clothing at the start and finish. After being disqualified from a number of races, he would simply delete the result and the recap from his Web site, “as if he had never registered for the race,” Singer reports. Others in the racing community began to notice the discrepancies, too, and took to the Internet forum LetsRun to discuss their theories. Michael McGrath, a former assistant track and cross-country coach at Haverford College and a LetsRun visitor, learned that, in February, 2009, Litton had run a fifteen-kilometre race in Florida. According to the split times, his pace during the second half—five minutes, twenty-four seconds per mile—was almost two minutes faster than during the first half. “Such a divergence is called a ‘negative split,’ ” Singer writes, “and a variance of that magnitude is as common as snow in Miami.” The online community soon noticed that one race on Litton’s Web site —a marathon in west Wyoming—was fabricated altogether. “For his fabricated marathon, Litton had assembled not only a Web site but also a list of finishers and their times (plus name, age, gender, and home town), and created a phantom race director, who responded to e-mail queries,” Singer reports. Pressed via e-mail by other runners, Litton “denied that he had cheated or had intended to deceive.” When Singer speaks with Litton, he offers “deflection, not explanation.” Singer reports that Litton “acknowledged that he had been disqualified from several races, but only for unintentional infractions. He conceded only to having ‘been careless, not paying attention.’ ” Ultimately, Singer writes, “the paramount question was ‘How?’ Did he have an accomplice? Did he drive from point to point? Ride a bicycle? Devise digital subversions?” At the Boston Marathon, “the oldest, most prestigious, and most professionally managed event on the American racing calendar, Litton had hit every split, changed his clothes along the way, and broken three hours,” Singer writes. “No one but Litton could say how he did it.”
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