pop_pop! wrote:
gatorade&vodka wrote:This, but also for RDs to make their races less laughably easy to cheat - both by adding mats and/or video and by looking through the results after the fact. It's Rossi's fault he cheated, but there's room to blame Lehigh too. If they had done their jobs and disqualified Rossi quietly they could have spared him the embarrassment, spared Internet posters from doing their work for them, and spared us all from having to hear about this whole "news" saga.
What is the race organizer's incentive for doing the right thing? There isn't one. Nobody in the org wants a cheater at their event, but that's different than time+money integrity checking results.
I agree that some kind of integrity checking would be great, especially for a BQ. But, good luck getting the race organization to do this voluntarily.
Well when you add mats you can give runners splits and have an athlete tracker for their friends and spectators. It costs money but adds value to the race, especially as runners come to expect these things from other races. And for checking results, hopefully there is some negative publicity associated with being "that race where the guy cheated by taking a car ride".
Though the more I think about it, Lehigh may be in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because of all those people who didn't read the whole story and are commenting that one time they didn't get photos, or they improved their marathon drastically, and why on earth would a marathon ever DQ a guy for that...