Frank Meza 2:53:10 at LA Marathon (70 years old) unofficial time (just finished)

Uh-oh wrote:

FM just made it to drudgereport.com. Now, it's truly international.

Just read the Fox News report.

To anyone not up on the details, they’ll come away thinking he just left the course to pee and he’s vowed to prove himself at 2020 LAM.

I rescind my opinion that Frank has been sufficiently humiliated.

He’s good wrote:

Uh-oh wrote:

FM just made it to drudgereport.com. Now, it's truly international.

Just read the Fox News report.

To anyone not up on the details, they’ll come away thinking he just left the course to pee and he’s vowed to prove himself at 2020 LAM.

I rescind my opinion that Frank has been sufficiently humiliated.

Someone posted this was featured on Sportscenter last night as a separate thread.

Here’s a link until the footage is available.

contrarian wrote:

Note there are many sequences (presumably from different photographers); I think you'll still need to run the other query to get all of them. Note also that that query is limited in its results, but since the starting timestamp is a parameter your best bet is probably to use as starting timestamp whatever the last photo from the previous query ended with.

It wouldn't surprise me to discover Frank in some other photos here but I don't have the patience to try and find him!

Thanks, Contrarian. I'll handle the gruntwork--your URL worked great on that series, but since my programming days pretty much ended with Fortran and IBM punch cards, how did you extract the URL for that specific photo. In other words, if I find a photo I want to sequence, how do I extract that URL? Sorry for being such a newb, but like I said, my computer programming skills are dated.

Carlsbad 2014 anyone?

https://www.runraceresults.com/Secure/RaceResults.cfm?ID=RCFY2014

Once again, Frank appears in very few photos compared to other runners. Looking at photos of finishers with similar gun times, he's never around. Many photos show bikes on the course, so that would have been an easy thing to do in this one, apparently.

https://www.marathonfoto.com/Landing/26652014W1/carlsbad-marathon-and-half-2014

Best media coverage yet, includes lots of Derek's material (and Derek)

https://www.insideedition.com/media/videos/did-70-year-old-doctor-cheat-during-los-angeles-marathon-54186

Results from Carlsbad are strange. Tons of people with low 3 or sub 3 chip time, ten minutes more for gun time. Clear 9 minute milers listed as sub 3. With all the out and back it looks like an easy course to cheat, but that many people can't have cheated. Timing looks messed up.

Nice little tune up to record 3:05:31 at age 65 on a bike friendly course.

Frank looks trim, taut and terrific as usual.

https://www.marathonfoto.com/Proofs?PIN=3J6V39&lastName=MEZA

Regarding 2009 Pasadena

I’ve looked through a bunch of his “cohort” photos and haven’t seen him. The course looks terribly easy to cut on, and they appeared to only have 3ish photo spots (getting him in one).

http://www.usatf.org/events/courses/maps/showMap.asp?courseID=CA10006RS

It may be an issue of him never passing close enough to any photographers to appear when not on course.

deadesq wrote:

Thanks, Contrarian. I'll handle the gruntwork--your URL worked great on that series, but since my programming days pretty much ended with Fortran and IBM punch cards, how did you extract the URL for that specific photo. In other words, if I find a photo I want to sequence, how do I extract that URL? Sorry for being such a newb, but like I said, my computer programming skills are dated.

I used the Developer Tools in Chrome (specifically the "Network" tab) to sniff requests, then clicked around the photo site to see what queries were being run. The first URL for each click seems to show what was sent to pull the data.

So in this case to find that photo I searched for runner 185, which Chrome indicates sent this query (with a boatload of data about his photos):

Note you can copy and paste this data into something like

and click "Format" to make it more human readable.

Clicking the photo in this set we're actually interested in sent this URL:

Then searching for this in the first JSON query (I just searched for the timestamp, 1406636962), gives more details about the photo:

{

"id": 6555945,

"photographer_id": null,

"tagger_id": 749,

"tagged": true,

"marked_for_deletion": false,

"reviewed_for_deletion": null,

"print_url": "//

;,

"original_url": "

;,

"display_url": "//

;,

"thumb_url": "//

;,

"tags": [

],

"race_id": 340,

"orientation": "landscape",

"location_id": 2896,

"taken_at": "2014-07-27T07:41:21.000Z",

"participant_ids": [

826330

]

}

Specifically you want the "original_url", which is the link you can traverse backwards and forwards for nearby images of interest.

Hope this helps; let me know if some of this doesn't make sense.

polyester wrote:

Results from Carlsbad are strange. Tons of people with low 3 or sub 3 chip time, ten minutes more for gun time. Clear 9 minute milers listed as sub 3. With all the out and back it looks like an easy course to cheat, but that many people can't have cheated. Timing looks messed up.

Does this explain why Frank ONLY recorded a 3:05:31 and not sub 3?

Apologies for the ugly formatting in my last response - didn't expect the JSON URLs to all be embedded. Hopefully you're able to piece together my intention from that.

be nice if you supersleuths could get a hi res of that bike pic

I'm OS so can't get the Inside Edition video, but who needs it when you can read this:

"A retired doctor stunned the world when he shattered the record for his age group at the Los Angeles Marathon in March. But, officials said, it was a lie. Frank Meza, 70, finished the marathon with an official time of 2:53:10, more than an hour ahead of the next closest person in his age group. After an investigation, however, Meza was disqualified. Meza, however, denies the allegations of cheating, saying he merely left the course in search of a bathroom, running on the sidewalk as he did so." ?

And the Daily Mail one is even better. ?

Here ya go OS users

https://youtu.be/fBNZn6yiHfM

You’ve been staring at geezer pics for too long wrote:

You’ve really lost perspective.

This is entertainment. It’s just a show. The whole world is now laughing at runners in general for caring enough to cheat at something so trivial. No one in the world truly cares about this because it’s unimportant and ultimately meaningless to them. It’s a footnote that supports the consensus that running sucks and people who run marathons are crazy. There’s a lot more that parents are concerned about than that stupid race and some dumb old retired doctor cheating.

Step away. Go out for a run before you get any loonier.

This IS serious business. The integrity of the sport is at stake.

Daily Mail doesn't feck around with touchy feely stuff:

"On closer investigation, Meza's web of lies appears to have quickly untangled as it emerged he had a history of disqualifications and bans from marathons in California."

Inside edition wrote:

Best media coverage yet, includes lots of Derek's material (and Derek)

https://www.insideedition.com/media/videos/did-70-year-old-doctor-cheat-during-los-angeles-marathon-54186

The final quote from Meza's spokesperson: "He has not cheated...will run again..." These people are delusional.

I hope the super-sleuths keep at it. Looking forward to the Long Beach article on MI.