Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?

I'm not sure presence or lack of presence in Lost & Found really tells you a whole lot.

If no bib number is tagged in a photo, that photo is in the L&F. However, you could be in many photos, have your bib tagged in none of them, and still not be in the L&F because someone else with a taggable bib number is in those photos with you.

L&F is really just a small subset of photos where you could find yourself untagged in a photo. The vast majority of photos you will find yourself in would be someone elses tagged photo, with you in the background or number not distinguishable.

So, I'm not sure much should be made from presence or lack of presence in L&F.

HeCheated wrote:

One thing to keep in mind: While we are looking at all the photos and video we have access to, the marathon organizers and USATF are looking at all of that and perhaps more. Lord knows what else they could have. Mike can post all he wants on Facebook about what he did and didn't do, but eventually there will be a USATF conclusion.

Has the USATF commented on this? My guess is that they couldn't care less, and will not be launching "a full and thorough investigation."

I called for Carrie Underwood to launch a full and thorough investigation of what's in my underpants, but she never did.

Chet Manly wrote:

I'm curious on how prevalent cheating like this is. Do we think that there's only a handful of people that cheated to get their Boston qualifier? Or are there a few hundred? Or maybe even more?

I have been proofing the results for the marathon I work for since about 2000. We have about 2500 marathon finishers each year so that would be about 40,000 total over that span. I have DQ'd about 50 people, only 2 have challenged the DQ, plus we got Kipped which we didn't record as a DQ but I remain highly suspicious. To be fair, in about 50% of the DQ's the runners contacted me before I even had a chance to contact them to ask for an explanation. They saw their result on the preliminary results and got in touch to say they weren't actually a finisher. The way chips are so sensitive now if a DNF runner walks near the finish line mat sometimes they get checked in. That always makes me feel good when the runner contacts me first and wants to set the record straight.

Of the 2 DQ's that challenged me, one I had 2 missing chip splits (out of 7 we recorded that year). One of the missing splits happened to be an unannounced mat which we also had video on, and the other was a mat only about 1.5 miles away from the unannounced mat. I reviewed a pretty large chunk of video to try to find this runner and no one wearing what they were wearing is on the video. The runner originally though we only had the hung their argument on "my chip must have malfunctioned". But when given the opportunity to review the video with me to point themselves out they stopped corresponding to me.

The other DQ was in our early days using chips before we put out multiple chip mats. Back then we used to just do start, 13.1, finish. A friend of mine who was spectating just happened to notice a maybe runner acting squirrelly and brought it to my attention afterwards. What he saw...a tall blonde young woman with a visor, tank top, and black running pants (maybe capris, I don't remember exactly it was a long time ago, but I do remember it wasn't shorts) on a hot day. He was at the 25 mile mark or so and noticed her walking away from the finish line, then about 10 minutes later she passed him jogging towards the finish line. He said he and his wife both commented on her immediately when she was headed towards the finish line. He was on his bike, rode ahead to get her bib number, and told me afterwards. When I checked out her results she had like a 1:50 first half and a 1:22 second half, which would have been the 2nd fastest 2nd half of all the women marathoners that day. When I wrote to her to get her side of it she gave the typical "I just started feeling great" and "I don't use my watch for splits", that kind of stuff. And one of the things she said when it was clear that we weren't buying her story was "what about my Boston qualifier?" When I did some further research it looked to me like she had possibly cut the course at least twice previously (including only running 1 loop of a 2 loop Ironman course).

So, long answer to your question...in my experience I've caught 2 out of about 40,000 finishers at our race that had a BQ. Plus my suspicions regarding Kip. I may have missed a few, especially in the earlier years, but the systems we now have in place I haven't seen anything suspicious that we didn't pull out as a DQ since 2010. But I think a lot of marathons don't try as hard to police their results, so I suspect "how many runner cheat to get a BQ" would number in the dozens. I wouldn't say hundreds, maybe I'm wrong.

rojo wrote:

somebloke wrote:

Those are runners with a small number of pics taken, or none at all. The idea is to prove that every single runner in that list can be found on the 'lost and found' set of photos. Except, of course, our buddy.

But I don't just understand it. Take for example #1226. If you type him in, they list 3 photos. None of them are him. How did the person who wrote the script realize that? .

That bit I am not sure either.

If you typed in 1226 and it returned photos, it's because you've tagged them as "favorites."

rojo wrote:

I don't get how the script worked. It typed in every finisher and then he/she looked to see if they had a photo?

Rojo, here's what the guy (JustANumbersGuy) said when he posted these -- I have no idea what this means:

"For fun, I wrote a script to go through the photo website and find any other participants who were only photographed at the finish line, or not at all. Here's a list of bib numbers.

1444

2161

1050

1226

1355

2488

1850

1612

1187

1755

1193

1754

2451

2184

1902

2390

1954

2401

2188

2203

2336

1132

1200"

1226 has 0 photos. Where do you get 3 from?

I believe his script looks at all the photos, excludes any from the finish line reel, and simply counts how many there were. And his final list were all the finisher bib numbers with 0 photos remaining. #1226 would fit this criteria as that bib doesn't even have a finish line photo.

madmandoc wrote:

Are there many runners who do proportionately better in the marathon than shorter races? I doubt it. It is hard to believe that a runner with many races on record never tried to go all out in a 5k or 10k but then decided to try suicide pace in a marathon and held on. I just don't buy that someone who never tried 5k pain for 5 minutes somehow endured marathon fatigue for an hour. How long has this guy been running? In my second year of running I took 15 mins+ off my half marathon time in less than 6 months. In the 4 years since I've shaved only 3 more. If he were a new runner who suddenly did some real training instead of the 30 mpw stuff you see in beginner plans, it could be possible though.

i am one of those runners. my 10k PR is just under 40, my marathon PR is 2:56. my only 5k was 20mins, a few weeks after an ultra. some runners are simply better at long distances than others.

thankfully i have mountains of proof (both good proof like i was happy with my time and bad proof like what a sh!tball day that was) of all my races...

If you squint and look thru your fingers it might actually sound like he's telling the truth...certainly sounds like the truth to a non runner.

I agree the photos alone are pretty much enough proof but the one fatal flaw in debating his 3:11 is you're pretty much basing his fitness based on his races found on atlinks. If you pull me up on atlinks you'll see a couple of high 240 marathons and some 17:50 5Ks. Based on atlinks I'm not capable of a 2:47. What pisses me off is it doesn't show my 1:16 half or multiple sub 16:15 5ks.

rojo wrote:

But someone please explain how he knows these are people without photos as some do have photos but they just aren't them.

You are missing the point. He is showing it's very, very unlikely to have almost no photos from the event.

What is the latest from the race organizers?

Shouldn't they just reach out to him and request clarification and force his hand?

If they dq him or threaten to, this will go viral. So they really can force him to explain.

As somebody earlier pointed out, if you actually read what he posted, it is 100% the truth. He did "achieve a qualifying time" at Lehigh Valley. He did get photographed at the start and finished. His chip did register at the start and finish.

There isn't a single thing false in his statement.

Of course he doesn't make any statements about what happened between the start and finish line.

runDirtyrun wrote:

rojo wrote:

But someone please explain how he knows these are people without photos as some do have photos but they just aren't them.

You are missing the point. He is showing it's very, very unlikely to have almost no photos from the event.

If there are false positives, that could increase the likelihood that Rossi was legitimately simply missed by photographers. Admittedly, my method is vulnerable to this possibility. But I don't think there are that many false positives, if any.

I achieved a qualifying time in my last marathon, too. Unfortunately it was for the 70 year old woman BQ and I am a 37 year old male.

His facebook statement proves he's been following this thread very closely

shin shi wrote:

His facebook statement proves he's been following this thread very closely

good observation... and in that case:

HI MIKE!

So you presumably could link to a race result of those times-- he's not claiming that, just that he's a workout beast who has lousy races-- except that great day where he ran 3:11 in the heat. Different (and much weaker) case.

hiyooo! wrote:

rojo you are a devious mofo

POD

justAnumbersGuy wrote:

runDirtyrun wrote:

You are missing the point. He is showing it's very, very unlikely to have almost no photos from the event.

If there are false positives, that could increase the likelihood that Rossi was legitimately simply missed by photographers. Admittedly, my method is vulnerable to this possibility. But I don't think there are that many false positives, if any.

Agree.

Hi mike!