The Lehigh Valley Marathon Is Not Going To Disqualify Mike Rossi – The Viral Boston Marathon Dad – Because No One Reported Wrongdoing As The Race Took Place

by LetsRun.com
May 29, 2015

LetsRun.com received the following statement this afternoon Lisa Walkiewicz the Vice President of Communications for Via of the Lehigh Valley regarding Mike Rossi‘s participation in the 2014 Lehigh Valley Marathon. They have, barring future developments, decided not to disqualify Mr. Rossi simply because they received no reports of wrongdoing as the race took place. Here is their statement:

After a thorough review of the available evidence in relation to Mike Rossi’s participation in the 2014 Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon, the Marathon committee concluded that while there is data from Rossi’s participation in other racing events indicating that Rossi’s time may not be accurate, there is not conclusive evidence that his time in the 2014 LVHN Via Marathon is inaccurate.  The LVHN Via Marathon has not received any reports from the more 2,500 race participants, thousands of spectators, and more than 600 volunteers, course marshals, security personnel, medical personnel or race officials on the course of any wrong doing by any runner.  Therefore the LVHN Via Marathon Committee concluded that Rossi will not be disqualified unless additional conclusive information arises in the future.

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Moving forward the LVHN Via Marathon has taken several action steps to verify runner participation and provide the utmost accuracy in timing and scoring the race for all runners.  For the 2015 LVHN Via Marathon, the course will have a minimum of six timing mats – at the start, finish line and four additional on-course locations.  In addition, there will be video surveillance of the course at several locations which Via will archive annually.

The Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon is proud to be a Boston Marathon Qualifying event and will continue to support this race by providing athletes the opportunity to be a part of this longstanding tradition.  The LVHN Via Marathon appreciates the running community’s support and vigilance in ensuring the integrity of our race and looks forward to continuing to provide a high quality racing experience.

In our minds, the statement by the marathon organizers is logically flawed. Imagine if the police in this country weren’t allow to charge people with burglary simply because it wasn’t reported while it was happening – crime would be even more of a problem than it already is.

When one considers that it’s physiologically improbable to say the least (some would say impossible) that Mr. Rossi was even capable of running 3:11:45, given his personal bests at other distances which all equate to a marathon over 3:30, with the fact that he wasn’t seen in a single photo on the course, the burden of proof should have shifted to Mr. Rossi to provide some shred of evidence that he ran the race (GPS data, photos, statements from fellow competitors, spectators or family members, etc.) or was at least physically capable of something close to a 3:11:45 (training logs, GPS data, statements from training partners), particularly when one considers that his own contemporaneous statements contradicted his initial explanation that his other PRs were much slower simply because he was injured or not going all out in many of his shorter races.

The integrity of our beloved sport is at stake. We’ve spent much of the last few weeks researching and writing our own story on Mr. Rossi that lays out the evidence against Mr. Rossi.  We were going to publish the story which was going to ask for the DQ today, but now will publish the story early next week as we don’t want it to get lost as a Friday afternoon news dump.. In our minds, the evidence is indeed conclusive that Mike Rossi – the viral Boston Marathon dad – is a marathon cheat and should have not been on starting line in Boston.


Discuss the Mike Rossi story on our messageboard: MB: Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?

 

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