Al Jazeera publishes piece on how alleged Olympic marathoner Ashley Uhl-Leavitt has a GoFundMe. Who?

So who is going to report the GoFundMe for fraud by deception?

I once heard a mom at a high school track meet tell her friend that it's so crazy how the average high school runner of today is faster than Olympians from the 1970s. ...huh? I imagine there's equivalent ignorance in all sports and subjects, but when it's your subject, the whacked-out beliefs hit like a ton of bricks.

Already did it.

ibb.co

Go-Fund-Me-Fraud

Image Go-Fund-Me-Fraud hosted in ImgBB

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I just did. You should to. The more reports: the more attention it will get and the more likely it is to get taken down. It took me about 7 minutes. Here's the text I included, feel free to copy / paste

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"This fundraiser is to help our friend and coworker, Ashley, run in the Paris Olympics. And yes, you’ve read that right." This is not correct. The fundraiser is to participate in the community marathon in Paris on the same course of the olympic marathon. To "run in the Paris Olympics" one must earn the privilege via a very stringent process.

"...in order to potentially earn a spot to compete in the marathon in the 2024 summer Olympic games. After accomplishing these series of goals, we were beyond thrilled to find out that Ashley was offered a spot to run in the marathon." This is not correct. The fundraiser is to participate in the community marathon in Paris - which can be entered by anyone in the world. There is no invitation and no "earning" spots.

"The exciting news regarding Ashley’s amazing opportunity to race in the summer games has began to spread and supporters have inquired about how to help our girl get across the finish line in Paris". Again, this is not to race in the summer olympic games, this is to race in a community marathon that anyone can enter.

I wish I would have copied what I wrote and pasted it here. It seems to be gone now but the claim was sent. These people just disgust me.

Trust the media? What exactly is the media today? Back in the days of traditional news, my editors told me, “if your mother says that she loves you, check it out.” But that musty old expression is as dead as my news career. The old media had plenty of issues – and some high profile cases of false reporting – but if you were reading the sports news in the 90s you wouldn’t be reading a bizarre string of AI text that is so weird but still looks and feels a lot like a news story. Today anyone can publish anything (which is what I'm doing right now) but it has also destroyed all of the revenue streams that paid for actual reporting, and paved the way for Ashley’s story. In my old life I used to routinely spend weeks on a story, doing interviews, checking records, filing FIOAs and having drafts go back and forth through layers of experienced editors. It was an expensive business and it's over. This isn't about the media's laziness, it's about the media's death.

Great. Can't wait for the backlash comments defending this woman and her "Olympic journey." 😂

The best part ... she's currently on vacation in Italy.

Source: her last Facebook post.

Imagine seeing someone in Italy and then handing her some money to travel to Paris a couple months later. You'd gotta be a special kinda stupid. Lol

She hails from Florida. That's to be expected given that state is the one that's banning books.

Who’s up for donating a few bucks so they can add “words of support” to the public gofundme page?

I’d say anyone who is gullible enough to donate to this GoFundMe or for that matter any fundraising campaign without doing their due diligence deserves to be separated from their money.

This GFM seems cunningly crafted with some effort to be defensible in that it is not actually saying she qualified for the Paris Olympics, but just “the marathon”. Paris Oympics qualification is qualified with “potentially”.

Whoever wrote that article did no research. Other details in it are wrong... They state "
Singapore offered the equivalent of $737,000 for first-place finishers. This time, Singapore is raising the stakes and will offer first-place winners $1m in prize money."

But Singapore's offer hasn't changed. It's been 1 million Singapore dollars for a while. In 2020, that was equivalent to 737,000USD, and it's still 1 million SGD (will be slightly few USD when converting), not 1 million USD.

I wonder if this popular Paris marathon during the Olympics was set up with the expectation that loads of wretched shysters would take the places and twist the truth to show on their social media that they were running 'the Paris Olympic Marathon' and be able to get away with it becuase they are connected with lots of stupid people. It's true that they are running a marathon in Paris whilst Paris hosts the Olympics so it's such an easy lie to create and spread.

While I don't think think it's as nefarious as you are suggesting, you make a good point about the Popular Marathon being designed to attract influencers.

I mean I wouldn't think it too much of a stretch for al jazeera to confuse the truth or be confused by the truth.

A gofundme posted by the woman who did the publicity stunt of riding the fat tire bike at Kona 2022, seeking money to take a social trip for her and Ashley to Paris...after Ashley vacationed in Italy and Audrey vacationed in Kona, Hawaii. Hilarious.

It's the mass participation marathon. You did have to send some sort of application about your good deeds to run in it.

olympics.com

Marathon Pour Tous: Paris 2024's mass participation race to be gender equal with 110 countries represented

@olympics

For the first time in history, members of the public can run the same course of the Olympic marathon on the same day as the Olympians.

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I can't wait for the endless videos from the likes of Matt Foxx, Nick Bester, Kofuzi, Matt Choi, and Ben Felton with thumbnails of "I PR'd in the Olympic Marathon." Lol.

Hero