Marathon cheat/investigation blog

Can you add Kip Litton?

hmmmm. It'll be tough to get that blog off the ground. Don't take it personally if nobody ever comments on it and the view totals are low. A dedicated website just to talk about cheating doesn't sound like a need to me. A random cheating thread on letsrun interspersed with all the all normal drivel is plenty even if those random cheating threads are deleted for no apparent reason by the powers that be.

Good luck.

Was the url iwannagetsued.com already taken?

I thought we already had a place for this. Here.

You haven't added Kip Litton yet.

launnie wrote:

I thought we already had a place for this. Here.

I thought so too. But we run the risk of work being lost with threads being deleted--since we can't seem to get a clear policy.

But why would I want to post there, if I just want to do it here?

The mods delete threads at will. Some they allow to stick, others they delete usually with no explanation.

They actually "banned" me last week, for starting a thread that asked a question about what someone else had written on the Rossi thread.

Feel free to post a result here that is questionable. Or of course, I'd love to get some comments on the blog.

www.marathoncheat.blogspot.com

The main point is to have a central place to summarize the evidence. SOKLR did a great job for the Kip Litton stuff, and Sara's blog kind of did the same thing. And as other's said--if a thread gets killed--by having all the information on the blog - it won't be lost.

For the one I put up yesterday--I didn't have a whole lot of data--so I left the name off the blog. Just looking for anything someone has to add--I saw the post with the half marathon time--Thanks

I'll see what the blog becomes - It is getting a decent amount of views..and there isn't much up there yet. I think when we find a new, compelling case that requires investigation, it'll see some traffic and posts. And it may be that the posts come through letsrun--and I just use the blog to summarize--I'll just have to see how it plays out.

Anyone has any new cases--post them here or on the blog, or email me through the blog link. Most marathon results don't have the splits on the main results pages--so it's tough for one person to go in cold and spot the results worth looking into.

Check out bib# 2861 from the Calgary Marathon 2014 results. He placed 293 overall.

10km split: 1:01:15

20km split: 2:04:10

30km split: missing

42.2km finish: 3:44:10

Additionally, if you look at the course map between 28-29 km, the course goes out and back along the same road along the river. It seems pretty obvious that this participant, crossed to the other side of the road at this point and rejoined the race close to the 37 km mark, thus missing the 30 km mat. My guess is that the guy was having a bad day, decided to cut his losses and head back to the start/finish area and stupidly ran through the finish without telling the race director to remove him from the results. He missed a Boston qualifier (barely) and didn't place top 3 in his age category.

Briefly looking at his athlinks results, it doesn't look as though he's ever broken 4:00 for a marathon, even though he's run a fair number of races and is only getting older (55-59 age category). None of his shorter distance results indicate the ability to do so. His best results that I could find were 4:08:25 at the 2009 Vancouver Marathon and 1:57:58 at a 2013 half marathon.

Thanks. I'll probably just post this in the comments of the page to save the info, and can email the RD.

Start with the Disney Marathon, there are dozens of course cutters every year. They pretend to take a picture with the characters (located in the medians of out and back sections) and then innocently cut to the other side. Here's the results of literally 2 minutes of searching:

http://trackshack.com/disneysports/results/wdw/wdw14/mar_results.php?Link=13&Type=1&Bib=35838

http://trackshack.com/disneysports/results/wdw/wdw14/mar_results.php?Link=13&Type=1&Bib=37243

http://trackshack.com/disneysports/results/wdw/wdw14/mar_results.php?Link=13&Type=1&Bib=37325

Multiple missed timing mats (specifically the ones you would miss by cutting off out and back loops), and grossly uneven splits (sometimes faster than WR pace). The last guy also ran the half and split 36 min for 15k.

http://trackshack.com/disneysports/results/wdw/wdw14/hm_results.php?Link=12&Type=1&Bib=37325

I know multiple people have contacted Disney repeatedly about this but they make no effort whatsoever to remove them from the results. They could catch 95% of them with just an Excel spreadsheet of splits and an hour of work.

Thanks Dingler

The A1A marathon runner ran a 1/2 marathon this weekend. Finished in 2:11:44 (clock time).

ah Brazilians ....

Your Toronto Waterfront "cheater" could easily have just been somebody who went out too fast and cratered. There's only one missed split and those do happen occasionally to people who run the course. The first road race I ever ran was a marathon (on basically zero specific run training) and I went out in 1:24, with a second half of 1:47, and numerous short walking breaks. It's also possible that he tweaked an injury or cramped up around halfway and decided to jog/walk it in.

I don't think that there's enough evidence for the race director to DQ that guy, unless I'm missing something else.

Doubler wrote:

The A1A marathon runner ran a 1/2 marathon this weekend. Finished in 2:11:44 (clock time).

Looks like this was probably a new photo of the earlier half marathon.