I'm Done. The Mezra death brought home how cycincal and damaging this website it to real people

Brianruns10 wrote:

Suicide, and the motivating factors behind it, are many and varied and complex. People do it for difficult to understand reasons. Is the public scrutiny a contributing factor? Very likely. But I also think that anyone who cheats, repeatedly, to the extent that Meza did, has to be at some fundamental level experiencing a significant personality disturbance. I think this man's problems go far, far deeper than we can know or understand, though it is easy to ascribe the blame solely to cyber bullying, in an attempt to derive some kind of meaning or logic to the inherently illogical.

In light of that, maybe it doesn't make sense to endless seek 'justice' in these cheating cases. The potential for damage is too great to fit the small crime. There doesn't seem to be a spree of cheaters that threaten the sport. If it is just a relatively few people with 'significant personality disturbance' then I think the resulting punishment outweighs the crime. I say post an email for people to send evidence, present a case to the race organizers and let it be. No need for 5000 post threads.

People like this should be disqualified but not endlessly persecuted.

When questioned, all he had to say was that it was an experiment/joke to see how long he could get away with it to show how anyone could cheat the distance. Once the evidence was overwhelming, he fesses up.

Yes, that's really all he had to say and then ignore running forums, newspaper articles and go on living his life.

Even with being a very bright individual he couldn't think of saying that as unfortunately there were too many external and internal pressures he was dealing with and it became "overload".

I could get into way more detail, but I'm pretty sure that's what he faced his last few days. Sad all the way around, but I wish he had talked to someone and realized that there truly was a way out and to save face with Family and Friends.

My take is that he loved running with all his heart and believed it was a thing worth coaching, mentoring, and preaching about. Early on he found that he could do a simple course cut and beef-up his results, thereby epitomizing to others how great a sport it was with hard work and devotion and those things he espoused. This made him feel good. So he did it again. And again. And when he found that those around him were caught up in this grand thing called running, he went overboard and started making it on happen on a world record level.

But it wasn't just about making himself look good. I think he was doing it so he could teach others what was possible, and he was willing to risk everything because the message was that important (in his eyes).

When he was found out, there was simply no going back. He couldn't say it was a joke because that is exactly contrary to his love of the sport. He knew that he had become the personification of what he hated most, and the message he was now sending was his ruination.

But what i think is hard to understand is that his unmitigated love for the sport may be the very thing that allowed him to turn a blind eye to the unspeakable evils he would commit to fulfill it. Ultimately, when he would have to reconcile the two in the face of public scrutiny, he simply could not.

So I am puzzled. I just got around to reading the articles and threads about Frank Meza last week and the burning question I have is: Did Frank Meza ever legitimately complete a race in his entire life without cheating? I've looked at his Athlinks page with results going back to the mid 1990's and it doesn't look like any of it is legitimate. Did this guy cheat his entire life?

Can anyone even confirm he raced in real track events? Or is his whole background made up?

This makes Kip Litton look like a complete amateur.

who cares.

it seems really weird to be still concerned about that at this point.

If he had done what I posted above, he would not have to have faced public scrutiny. He could easily say that he chose not to tell others around him until the cat was outta the bag, otherwise it would compromise his efforts. Very easy to come up with a scenario like that and make it believable.

Truth be told, he probably would have gotten several positive interviews/stories on it in terms of "exactly" how did you do it, how close did he cut it between mats, etc...

Yes, he certainly could have said it was a joke, quite simply too. He gave away one big hint by saying that he runs for fun, that's a deal sealer right there.

He could have helped Race Directors in how to make it harder to stop those who don't want to run the whole course (think William Smarto and how he helped the banks). No, I'm not comparing him to a bank robber, hardly, but I'm saying look at the end result.

Now look at Kip Litton. Everyone and their brother knows what he did and how he did it, no big secret. Kip knew that he had full running attire changes during the race but just came up with something and then said "prove it didn't happen that way". He even sat down for an interview, even faced with overwhelming evidence, he didn't care. In the end, where is he now? His life went on and the thread about him has been gone for ages.

If I were Frank's neighbor, I would have had a heart to heart with him. Frank had other avenues to escape, but the internal and external pressures were too much for him to really think it thru. Pressure alters our thinking and again, he was a bright guy so you can imagine what was going thru his mind. To me it's sad all the way around.

honestly...... wrote:

who cares.

it seems really weird to be still concerned about that at this point.

honestly, but you're here reading the thread and posting about it. Why?

honestly.......? wrote:

honestly...... wrote:

who cares.

it seems really weird to be still concerned about that at this point.

honestly, but you're here reading the thread and posting about it. Why?

....because the topic of the thread wasn't to dig further into Meza's cheating. In fact, it could be argued that the topic was to discuss how sick and damaging it was to do so. If you want to dig further into Meza's cheating, post on the Meza cheating thread so people can avoid it.

This easy, believe it or not wrote:

When questioned, all he had to say was that it was an experiment/joke to see how long he could get away with it to show how anyone could cheat the distance. Once the evidence was overwhelming, he fesses up.

Yes, that's really all he had to say and then ignore running forums, newspaper articles and go on living his life.

Even with being a very bright individual he couldn't think of saying that as unfortunately there were too many external and internal pressures he was dealing with and it became "overload".

I could get into way more detail, but I'm pretty sure that's what he faced his last few days. Sad all the way around, but I wish he had talked to someone and realized that there truly was a way out and to save face with Family and Friends.

Come on. Insulting peoples' intelligence would only have made it worse. And why didn't his joke/experiment end when he got busted at CIM?

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Come on. Insulting peoples' intelligence would only have made it worse. And why didn't his joke/experiment end when he got busted at CIM?

I would have totally accepted an explanation that everything Meza was doing as a huge practical joke. Like a big trolling. It would have made sense seeing as how otherwise what Meza did is beyond belief. So far I have not seen any evidence that Meza ever finished a race without cheating. For the two decades of running and triathlon results for Frank Meza, not one is believable given what we know now about his cheating methods. That is quite the accomplishment.

I am just shocked at how long Meza cheated for. And this is only for results website on the internet. It could be that Frank Meza cheated in every single race he entered for over 5 decades.

Simple answer. How many people knew about it? Exactly, you answered your own question.

Think smarter, longer if need be, but I have faith you'll get it as I've read your posts before and seem solid to me.

It only blew up when this site and a thread got the attention of RD's, period. Without it, do you actually believe they would have looked into it on their own? What RD doesn't want a time like that for a master's runner doing it on their course.

Bottom line, he could have said it was an experiment or joke and tried to see how long he could get away with it, fully knowing that he could not pull off those times and eventually it would end.

He wasn't insulting anyone's intelligence. We're runners and understand that he could not run that pace, most of us by looking at a very short video clip. But many, many others only knew the end result, his time;)...that's what he wanted.

CIM just made him go to another race, that's all. I've run over a dozen marathons and although I'm not from California, I'd never heard one word about him being DQ'ed or his name, until a bunch of marathon detectives put the pieces together.

Really Puzzled wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Come on. Insulting peoples' intelligence would only have made it worse. And why didn't his joke/experiment end when he got busted at CIM?

I would have totally accepted an explanation that everything Meza was doing as a huge practical joke. Like a big trolling. It would have made sense seeing as how otherwise what Meza did is beyond belief. So far I have not seen any evidence that Meza ever finished a race without cheating. For the two decades of running and triathlon results for Frank Meza, not one is believable given what we know now about his cheating methods. That is quite the accomplishment.

I am just shocked at how long Meza cheated for. And this is only for results website on the internet. It could be that Frank Meza cheated in every single race he entered for over 5 decades.

No, the evidence of photographs of him off the course and on a bike and the impossible splits spoke for itself. There was nothing Meza could have done to change people's perceptions.

Some people considered him to be the cheater of all cheaters and wanted him humiliated and forced to confess. I saw someone with a pathological urge to cheat that he couldn't control. I wish, for Frank's sake, that there had been a data base, accessible by all marathons, containing a list of runners to be banned from all marathons and which would have ended his career after the CIM bust.

As for why he committed suicide, Meza seemed to be a guy that craved positive attention. To have the opposite happen, times 10, was too much for him.

"cycincal and damaging this website it to real people"

Not quite sure what that garbled subject heading means, but it seems there's lots of websites, organizations, people, etc responsible when it comes to exposing cheating, and it's happening not just in running:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jul/13/igors-rausis-cheating-phone-tournament-scandal

Just watched this today:

https://youtu.be/r9NS6Uq9-zk

Highly recommend it, very similar it seems. Guy starts out with a small lie, but it leads to another, and starts a snowball effect. I could see a movie being made about Meza...

It's all very sad really. wrote:

"cycincal and damaging this website it to real people"

Not quite sure what that garbled subject heading means, but it seems there's lots of websites, organizations, people, etc responsible when it comes to exposing cheating, and it's happening not just in running:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jul/13/igors-rausis-cheating-phone-tournament-scandal

that was a professional player at the top level of the game though, right? not the same

the equivalent would be if people hounded a guy with a 5000 post thread, created 10 articles and sent a news crew to the door of a local amateur who cheated to win the local tournament at the Bingo hall.

triathleteguru wrote:

Just watched this today:

Highly recommend it, very similar it seems. Guy starts out with a small lie, but it leads to another, and starts a snowball effect. I could see a movie being made about ...

... Donald J. Trump

I don't think any of the alternatives would have been as useful as the 6000-post original thread. Not only was it engrossing to watch the story unfold over 3 months - until it took a stupid, unnecessary, tragic turn - but it was also extremely educational. Doubler and Amby Burfoot had looked into the same story on their own and passed. For the first 100 pages, all there was to go on was funky splits and some missed timing mats and photographers. It wasn't until 200 pages in that people, working together, started to develop some really interesting techniques for finding, analyzing, and presenting data. Everyone individually would have been much less effective. Some of the most compelling evidence only emerged in the last several pages and even after the thread was closed.

I don't know if there will ever be a case like it again. Compared to a 10-year spree and AG record times, everything else will seem like a letdown. But if there is another case worth the effort, there will be a lot more people who know what to look for.

Maybe it would help in future cases if only the accused's initials are used instead of the full name. People could still contribute to an open thread, but the thread wouldn't drive anything viral. Eventually a story would pop up on MI and the cheater would still have to face the fact that their cheating was now known. But I don't know if even the most purely objective and humane investigation would have had a different outcome in this case.

maybe this wrote:

I don't think any of the alternatives would have been as useful as the 6000-post original thread. Not only was it engrossing to watch the story unfold over 3 months - until it took a stupid, unnecessary, tragic turn - but it was also extremely educational. .

maybe your post takes a turn for the better but i stopped reading there.

Your shooting down suggestions that might have saved this guy's life because they are 'less engrossing'

honestly wtf is wrong with you people?

Don’t let the screen door hit you.