had Cheruiyot not fallen across the finish line, would you have given him the race?

I would be willing to bet that daniel would not even accept the money (and or) first place finish and give it to robert.

Old Runner Guy you don't get it do you? You seem to be wrong on most issues.

The winner of the 1908 Olympic Marathon collapsed and could not get across the line. The officials then helped carry him across. You make it sound like he ran the wrong way and they just directed him the right way and he was DQd. He couldn't get across on his own because he was exhausted.

The situation we have in Chicago is totally different. Imagine in 1908 if 5 feet from the finish the guy is winning the race and an official pulls a wire across the track and trips the guy knocking him out and he can not finish. Imagine if the guy had run fine until that point and was going to make it across the line unless something totally beyond his control came into play. That is a more similar situation.

Who's to say Cheruiyot wouldnt have fallen if whatever he supposedly slipped on wasnt there? Maybe he stepped on something that made his shoe a little slicker. The Nike Marathoner has a white sole, maybe its a little slicker. These guys run in enough high profile races and the same crap is taped and painted at every one. The finish line at Boston is painted on with thick paint and when I stepped on it the day before the race I said "damn, this is slick". It was a simple accident otherwise lets mark all courses with corn starch.

or better yet....SOme weird NAKED guy comes out of nowhere and tackles him before he can cross the line......

Oh....wait....that happened in the Olympics.....They didn't stop the race, and he unluckily got third place after looking unbeatable.....What if ugly NAKED guys tackles him 10 yards from the finish....1 yard from the finish....should it be handled any differently...

Perosnlly I don't hink so...>They should be all handled the same.....Slip and Slide or scary naked guy.....both should be prevented from happening from the race directors....

Either way....I see a huge lawsuit.....This little fall may have ended his running career which is far worse then just this one particular loss...they could show loss of future earnings due to negligence here.....especially with the video footage of the race workers making a mad scramble to pick up the slip and slides afterwards.....

The Race director should be held accountable.....I'm sorry, but you don't put out a slippery plastic covering on the road when it's raining, I don't care what the sponsors say.....Because I'll bet you, Lasalle Bank will be named as part of any lawsuit....

Based on what happened in this race, not some hypothetical or in 1908 or 2004 in Athens, I give him the win. He was inches from the line - it wasn't close, he was going to win, but the race put a foreign object on the ground I don't think it was just something painted on the ground - it looks like a piece of plastic or something. Personally I don't subscribe to the "rules are rules" no matter what argument, I think sometimes you do have to make exceptions when something interferes with the race that is not part of the competition and this would be one of those times.

The King Makes The Rules wrote:

Why don't we go back and award the gold medal to Dos Santos in the 2004 marathon? Everyone agrees he would have won if that crazy nut did not shove him off the course.

No, everyone does not agree that Dos Santos would have won. Even before Crazy-Priest-Man ran onto the course and tackled him, Dos Santos was already significantly slowing while Baldini and Meb were picking up the pace. The general consensus is that Baldini would have won even if Dos Santos was never impeded. We'll never know for sure, of course, but Dos Santos's win was not imminent, not even close.

In the hypothetical situation we're discussing in this thread, Cheruioyot's win would be an absolute certainty if not for the race organizer's negligence. He fell *inches* from the finish line. If he fell three miles from the finish line, then the issues would be very different.

all my sympathies would go out to him and the race director should pay him the first prize money

however they cant declare him the winner if he doesnt cross the line, whether it be an inch away or a mile away

thats how it works in sports, if football player is running in a open field and trips a foot before the endzone because the groundscrew left a divot there...are they going to give him the touchdown??

of course not and i dont see how thats any different here, you compete on the assigned venue with all its obstacles and pretty much the entire elite field got across that mat without falling and therefore should be awarded a higher placing (granted probably due to increased caution after seeing him fall but the rule still applies)

It's definately a game of inches......Ask the Tenneesee Titans about being inches away from a Superbowl victory....about 6" to be exact.....

KidStallyn wrote:

It's definately a game of inches......Ask the Tenneesee Titans about being inches away from a Superbowl victory....about 6" to be exact.....

That was an awesome defensive stop! No offense to the Titans but I had been waiting for like 30 years for the Rams to win the Super Bowl.

But back to the matter at hand. In the 2002 Washington, DC marathon the pace car went the wrong way at about mile 25. The first two runners went off course because of this. The second runner was trailing by several seconds at the time this happened. Somehow they got back on course and the runner who had been in the lead at the time of the mishap went on to win. The guy who was in second also went on to take second. In reading about the race afterward, the newspaper story said that some official had determined that no action was necessary because neither of the affected runners gained an advantage over the other.

This seems to imply to me that there is something in the rules that allow for the race to "set things right" if the race organizers screw up. I don't know what they could have done if the trailing runner ended up winning.

Anyone know of any rules like this?

Actually, whilst precedent has been set, rules have been changed since then, and legitimate medical assistance does not constitute "assistance" so that he would lose the race, think it's iffy if they actually helped or dragged him over the line, but in this case he had technically cross apparently. Though I think it's very lucky that there wasn't a big white line drawn as to where the finish was, because if it's the centre of the mat, I don't think his torso crossed (and feet don't count).

It's all ended in the right way though, so that's cool :P

things like this happen frequently. it's up to the race directors how it will be handled/case by case decisions.

you also have to remember that technically they changed the course after he fell by removing that piece of paper, so i think they would have had to give it to him, because they kind of made the course easier for the rest of the runners.

it CLEARLY was not their fault and CLEARLY was his fault. he is the one who slipped and fell -- not the race organizers. notice that the 2nd guy DID NOT slip. if he had stepped in a pothole or stepped on a rock in the same place and fell, fault would have been the same -- his. if silva had not re-taken the lead in 1994 in nyc and lost by a yard, would you have handed him first anyway?

now the race organizers are complete morons for putting something that slippery on the road at the finish line. i can just imagine some lackey in a meeting this summer coming up with the idea so as to avoid having to paint the road and then thinking what a genius he/she was.

I can't quite believe the last post...

It was his fault because the second guy DIDN'T slip???

If you see someone go down hard like Cheruiyot did, then perhaps, just perhaps rather than sprint flat out over the mat for the finish like he'd just done assuming that the ground by the finish WOULDN'T have been extremely slippy, he'd have taken a bit more care and kept his balance???

bitch tits wrote:

it CLEARLY was not their fault and CLEARLY was his fault. he is the one who slipped and fell -- not the race organizers. notice that the 2nd guy DID NOT slip. if he had stepped in a pothole or stepped on a rock in the same place and fell, fault would have been the same -- his. if silva had not re-taken the lead in 1994 in nyc and lost by a yard, would you have handed him first anyway?

now the race organizers are complete morons for putting something that slippery on the road at the finish line. i can just imagine some lackey in a meeting this summer coming up with the idea so as to avoid having to paint the road and then thinking what a genius he/she was.

The second guy didn't slip after seeing first place slip. Make sense?

What happened to sportsmanship? Anyone with a brain knows Cheryout (sp?) won the race. If you collapse 10 feet from the finish from exhaustion that's something else. The dude effectively slipped on a banana peel that shouldn't have been there. It's different if it's a cross country race, or if it's the hurdles, or if he bites the dust when the result isn't clear.

"Close enough" should be when something that shouldn't happen (slipping on stuff that shouldn't be there or getting mugged by a fan) happens so close to the finish that you don't have a fair chance to make up for it. I wouldn't count the Olympics thing with Vanderlei DeLima because he had time to make up for that. Maybe Meb and Baldini should have spotted him a few more seconds after it happened so that they didn't unfairly gain from his misfortune. The result would probably have been the same.

bitch tits wrote:

now the race organizers are complete morons for putting something that slippery on the road at the finish line. i can just imagine some lackey in a meeting this summer coming up with the idea so as to avoid having to paint the road and then thinking what a genius he/she was.

These sponsor logos are at the finish line of road races around the globe. There's never been a problem before, and there's no reason for anyone to anticipate a freak accident.

What part of "freak accident" don't you understand?

How about I start machine gunning the masses as they approach the chute? If they walk into the path of my bullets, it's their fault, not mine.You are a moron. Or a troll. Either way, go away.

bitch tits wrote:

it CLEARLY was not their fault and CLEARLY was his fault. he is the one who slipped and fell -- not the race organizers. notice that the 2nd guy DID NOT slip. if he had stepped in a pothole or stepped on a rock in the same place and fell, fault would have been the same -- his. if silva had not re-taken the lead in 1994 in nyc and lost by a yard, would you have handed him first anyway?

now the race organizers are complete morons for putting something that slippery on the road at the finish line. i can just imagine some lackey in a meeting this summer coming up with the idea so as to avoid having to paint the road and then thinking what a genius he/she was.

Pete wrote:

Interesting hypothetical question, though.

is it hypothetical? this may have been addressed previously, but to me it looks like while his feet may have crossed the line, his chest did not, and this is the criterion for finishing the race. so it looks to me like they are already bending the rules by giving the cheruiyot the win - not that i'm opposed to that.