CONTROVERSY at USATF Club Nationals - Tinman cheats

Snowflake central wrote:

Who cares if they were wearing pink tutus? They won. Pretty weak to even consider taking away a win like that.

I care. While I think HS rules DQs are absurd, the point of uniforms is to make it so spectators and other competitors know what the hell is going on. Imagine if at NCAAs college teams just wore random uniforms. Yes we could still score it using our phones but it would be pretty lame. Did the uniforms at least look similar and all have Tinman on them? If not then, I'm not opposed to a DQ.

Yes, it's hard because they represent different companies. That's what I call "their problem" not "my problem."

I don't call it cheating but I totally understand if they DQ.

Shut up bird

rojo wrote:

Snowflake central wrote:

Who cares if they were wearing pink tutus? They won. Pretty weak to even consider taking away a win like that.

I care. While I think HS rules DQs are absurd, the point of uniforms is to make it so spectators and other competitors know what the hell is going on. Imagine if at NCAAs college teams just wore random uniforms. Yes we could still score it using our phones but it would be pretty lame. Did the uniforms at least look similar and all have Tinman on them? If not then, I'm not opposed to a DQ.

Yes, it's hard because they represent different companies. That's what I call "their problem" not "my problem."

I don't call it cheating but I totally understand if they DQ.

Someone posted a picture of one of the Tinman guys. There were no words on the shirt. Didn't even say the name of the club. This is an obvious violation of the rules. None of the spectators had any idea what was going on.

It's also very bush league. If these guys want to be taken seriously they aren't doing a very good job of acting like a legit organization.

Picture of Morgan Pearson:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EVu4enFLJ/

Coach Tom Schwartz was babbling about the rules at the tech meeting to the point that other coaches were laughing at him.

This group will never garner sponsorship. They handle themselves poorly from the top on down.

I was at the meet today, though not competing for a team. At check in, I noticed that teams got their uniforms checked and if OKed by the official, they were giving a colored dot to put on their bib. All of the Tinman Elite seem to have that dot, so they must have been checked and cleared. If it was a violation, the person checking them should have caught it and had them correct it prior to race time.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

tinman fraud wrote:

Imagine if you were in an XC race and you thought you were beating all the guys from one team because you didn't see any of their uniforms ahead of you.

Out of tinman's top 4 runners there were 3 completely different uniforms. That's egregious. The guys right behind them probably had no clue they were on the same team as each other. That makes a huge difference.

I would rank what they as worse than the Patriots, but not as bad as the Astros.

I would rank it as worse than George Strait but not as bad as Days N Daze.

tinman fraud wrote:

The different uniforms are only a small part of the violation. The biggest issue is that the group of people they put together and raced as a team does not meet the definition of a team per USATF rules. I would like to see the addresses they registered with. Here is the rule:

USATF Competition Rule 4.2, in Open Cross Country competition, an athlete who is a non-resident member of an Association is eligible to compete for a team in that Association only if the athlete:

a) resides in an adjoining Association with government-defined Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) of a city which is primarily in the neighboring Association as approved by the appropriate sport committee or council; or

b) has historical membership based upon Association residency (at least 3 years continuous USATF membership years) is eligible to compete for that club.

It just keeps getting worse.

Rumor has it he took the boys to Hooters after the race.

Lololololo wrote:

tinman fraud wrote:

Imagine if you were in an XC race and you thought you were beating all the guys from one team because you didn't see any of their uniforms ahead of you.

Out of tinman's top 4 runners there were 3 completely different uniforms. That's egregious. The guys right behind them probably had no clue they were on the same team as each other. That makes a huge difference.

Usually my strategy in XC is to run as fast as I can. That doesn’t really change based on the colors of the jerseys around me.

This. If you’re so concerned about how the other runners around you are doing then maybe you need to take some more time to focus on yourself.

rojo wrote:

Snowflake central wrote:

Who cares if they were wearing pink tutus? They won. Pretty weak to even consider taking away a win like that.

I care. While I think HS rules DQs are absurd, the point of uniforms is to make it so spectators and other competitors know what the hell is going on. Imagine if at NCAAs college teams just wore random uniforms. Yes we could still score it using our phones but it would be pretty lame. Did the uniforms at least look similar and all have Tinman on them? If not then, I'm not opposed to a DQ.

Yes, it's hard because they represent different companies. That's what I call "their problem" not "my problem."

I don't call it cheating but I totally understand if they DQ.

However I do agree this. Different uniforms could be confusing to spectators. Although, how many people really know what’s going on in an XC race before the end? Tell me, how many of you can actually put together the team scores in your head as the runners are going by? I’m guessing that the people capable of that are the same people who can recognize runners by face and know what team they are on.

tinman fraud wrote:

The Tinman Elite athletes were not wearing the same uniforms. Morgan Pearson was wearing a 361 kit, Reed Fischer was wearing a Tracksmith kit. Other Tinman athletes were wearing Adidas.

This is a clear violation of USATF Club rules, they are not properly affiliated. Their team championship should be revoked and the prize money should be taken away.

Results here:

https://results.leonetiming.com/xc.html?mid=1933

Race video here:

https://www.usatf.tv/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=45365&mgroup_event_id=16&year=2019&do=videos&video_id=288140

Ok boomer

My take on this is:

- If you are USATF and this gets reported to you, some type of penalty should be applied. I don’t like the all-or-nothing DQ culture we have in running so some type of time penalty would be nice (though unlikely) and they would win anyways

- If you are the second place team, it is petty to try to win off of this after they just dominated you during the race. Run faster if you want to actually win.

Nice race, T2 and Morgan. Even if the title technically gets taken away from you guys, you still won and should be proud.

America is the land of faux authority. You all love to bend a knee to persnickety rules and men in uniform.

Running is about who is fastest from A to B.

It isn’t about uniforms and sigels and guidelines and men in board rooms telling you what you can wear or how your hair should be or what size your tattoo should be.

F@&k the nonsense. Whoever got to the finish first wins. End of discussion.

For anyone else who wants to waste their lives parsing bylaw 3.7169 - get a life. When the zombies come, no one will care.

The ones who will survive are the ones who stepped up and ran faster than the rest. Everyone else - stop talking, concede to the victors. Go home. Improve. And come back to fight again, or be forever forgotten as an inconsequential whiner who means nothing when it really matters.

Gopher2 wrote:

I was at the meet today, though not competing for a team. At check in, I noticed that teams got their uniforms checked and if OKed by the official, they were giving a colored dot to put on their bib. All of the Tinman Elite seem to have that dot, so they must have been checked and cleared. If it was a violation, the person checking them should have caught it and had them correct it prior to race time.

If the colored dot is, indeed, an indication of an OK'd uniform, and each Tinman Elite runner's bib was marked with a dot, then this seems to shout out that it's a USATF's official who is to blame.

B*itching about the uniforms reeks of unsportsmanship and slimebag tactics far worse that any itty bitty uniform issue.

I find it hard to believe that Tinman athletes would come all the way from Colorado to Pennsylvania and put in all this effort to race strongly, only to throw it all away because of a uniform DQ.

Here it is after 2 a.m. Eastern Time on a Sunday morning, and no DQ has been announced, that I know. What does that tell me? That PROBABLY there ain't gonna be no stinkin' DQ.

On the other hand, what has transpired suggests that USATF is uniquely qualified at shooting itself in the foot over and over again, and the last I heard no Adidas or Nike or New Balance, etc., shoe can stop a bullet.

And this whole thread, with its posts trying to shoot down Tinman Elite once again supports the notion that haters gonna hate, now and forever, on LetsRun. Why? Because, per the LetsRun motto, "Hate is a beautiful thing."

don't spin that sh*t wrote:

so what your saying is that uniform check is unorganised, stressfull, time consuming and detracting from people's performance.

Noted.

Shouldn't we be getting rid of that then rather than enforcing some dumb rule about it?

Gopher2 wrote:

I was at the meet today, though not competing for a team. At check in, I noticed that teams got their uniforms checked and if OKed by the official, they were giving a colored dot to put on their bib. All of the Tinman Elite seem to have that dot, so they must have been checked and cleared. If it was a violation, the person checking them should have caught it and had them correct it prior to race time.

I raced on a team and we went through check-in and got approval (the colored sticker dot). The color of the sticker varied for successive teams although I don't think the color had meaning - it was just a way to differentiate between subsequent teams at the check-in table.

Check-in was indeed time consuming and poorly managed. Ultimately it seemed trivial and meaningless.

- Per the rules check-in was to be done in the 30 minute window right before guntime - that was not feasible so at least they let teams check-in at seemingly any time before their race.

- the race officials didn't actually inspect uniforms. They just took a head count and put the circular colored sticker on our bibs and shuffled us along. It was meaningless.

Are there photos to see If Tinman Elite had the colored stickers from pre-race check in? If they skipped check-in... shame on them. (Take away the win? Take away the money? Both?) If they went through check-in and deceived the officials and swapped uniforms after check-in... shame on them but there's no way to prove it. If they went through check-in and got approval from the officials for their non-uniform uniforms.... shame on USATF for having bum workers and poor policies and poor rule enforcement.

my hot take:

- matching uniforms are an important feature of a team race

- the check-in procedure needs to be substantially improved and ultimately enforced

- Tinman Elite should know better and do better.

Unless you want to say that teams can’t split between shorts and tights, they all seem to be wearing the same uniform to me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EYX27nvAr/?igshid=cotqr6omq5pt

from the two IG pics above it seems apparent that Morgan Pearson and Reed Fischer both have pink (red?) circular stickers on their race bibs indicating that they got approval from race officials at check-in.

Assuming the other team members also have the same stick it's probably safe to say:

-Tinman Elite: wth? This is a team race - have your team members race in matching uniforms.

-USATF: do a MUCH better job with check-in and enforce your own rules.

Thank you for that! It shows 4 other team members with pink stickers on their bibs. So they went through check-in.

More importantly - it shows the uniformity of (most of) their team (uniform rule applies to tops only, fyi). So it seems like only one person (Morgan Pearson) didn't have a uniform complying with the rules.

Updated commentary:

-Tinman Elite: I retract my previous comments. Nothing to see here.

-USATF: do a MUCH better job with check-in and enforce your own rules.

Alex87 wrote:

tinman fraud wrote:

Imagine if you were in an XC race and you thought you were beating all the guys from one team because you didn't see any of their uniforms ahead of you.

Out of tinman's top 4 runners there were 3 completely different uniforms. That's egregious. The guys right behind them probably had no clue they were on the same team as each other. That makes a huge difference.

Walk me through how this decision making plays out during the race. You're running behind a guy. You think you can beat him... Then you estimate the team score in your head, decide you don't actually need to beat him, and say "F it" and hang back?

YOU are a clueless, axe-grinding wanker. There's no damn way anyone in the race knows any team's runners' positions to tally up scores. This is a fully faulty premise, moran.