I saw Dane Rauschenberg's performance in the Phoenix Marathon today, in which he's listed as finishing in 2:59:57, ie his first sub-3 in 4 years. His halfway split looks right on that target at 1:28:53, but he never recorded a split at mile 20. Looking through the results, only 5 other runners that weren't in the bottom 50 (out of 1880 finishers total) missed a split at all. I imagine the large number of runners in the bottom 50 missing splits just missed splits because the mats had been taken down. Of the other 5 missing splits not in the very back, 1 was missing both splits and perhaps just forgot their chip, while the other 4 were very midpack runners running in huge packs, so it's likely that the timing mats missed them due to tons of runners crossing nearly simultaneously. Also, maybe the others could've just kipped the course. It wouldn't surprise me if a few people did in every large-ish marathon. In any case, Dane was not in a pack and wouldn't have had much company around that point, so there's no way the timing mats were just bogged down. I'm not saying that he definitely kipped the course, but I know what the 20 mile mat looks like and there's absolutely no way to miss it if you're on course. His integrity has been brought up previously, so this isn't a first time suspicion for many. Also of note is that he announced that he was going for sub-3 late last year on a very fast course (with 3000' of drop) and only managed a 3:18, so it doesn't seem like he's had the ability to run this kind of time recently. I, for one, am going to be looking at race photos when they come out to see if he shows up at any point around mile 20. If he doesn't show up, the RD should be contacted. If he does, well, congrats on getting back into shape.
Anyway, here are the results with splits: