Cooking wrote:
Cheaters to date (?): Martin Franklin, William Jurena, the chick from the Sarasota and Detroit marathons, the many cheaters of Jean's Marines, the wannabe Kenyan guy. Did I miss a few?
Good start to your list. Add that Mexican/South American politician who got busted at a race last year, name escapes me.
At the marathon I work for, part of my job after the race is to review the results for "anomalies". We have about 2500 finishers, and every year I find a handful that don't look right. Usually I just remove them from the results and let them contact me to sort it out. Most aggregious case ever was a woman who ran splits of 1:49/1:24 on a super hot day. Her 1:24 would have been the 2nd fastest women's 2nd half that day. Oh, plus she was wearing pants (again-a hot day). When I looked her other marathon results up she had a couple finishes in the 5+ range, and one at Marine Corps around 4:15 but with a couple of the chip splits missing and paces at the other split points that didn't make any sense. After we pulled her out of our results she called to complain but had no info on any splits from her own watch, couldn't tell me anything about her training other than "I worked really hard for this one".
I offered to reimburse her entry, lodging, travel, meals the next year if she came back and ran within 15 minutes of the time she said she ran - PLUS make a $1000 donation to the charity of her choice. No surprise, she didn't come back.
2nd most aggregious, 2:05 first half, 1:42 second half...Race photos show a woman in the pictures the first half but show a man coming across the finish line. Same white tech shirt, same bib placement. Somewhere on the course they exchanged the shirt. I still can't figure out the "why" of that one.