Marathon "winners" DQ'd - more to the story?

Chip time was only crated to cater to large fields and get accurate times for those that do not start at the front.

Chip times have never been considered as official results for qualifying times or record purposes for any major federation.

They can be used for statistical analysis for splits in major races.

But a chip time has nothing to do with any real result.

And in the case of a single even it is place that matters, not time.

Then the only concern becomes cutting the course.

And this has not been questioned here.

People are becoming too reliant on technology.

It's a simple foot race.

oftenrunning52 wrote:

Further, take the results to get it verified for Trials consideration and explain to them that you only have a gun time and no chip time even though chips were used and see how far you get.

Why would a federation that does not accept chip times care if a registered competitor did not have a chip time?

Star wrote:

oftenrunning52 wrote:

Further, take the results to get it verified for Trials consideration and explain to them that you only have a gun time and no chip time even though chips were used and see how far you get.

Why would a federation that does not accept chip times care if a registered competitor did not have a chip time?

Many races use chip times and spotters recording bib numbers at selected positions to provide some assurance that runners haven't cut the course.

Whether or not one agrees that a DQ was the best action in this specific case, it's mind boggling that so many on this thread apparently don't see how running in a race without a bib and chip is a problem.

Of course running without a bib and chip is a problem when you are trying to record times for a large group of people.

What it means is that you will not likely get identified for a result.

But in this case, it was the winners, who were registered, and they were identified.

It's not like some guy in 10th place that didn't wear his bib comes up to the officials, shows the time on his watch and says put me down for this time.

No one's encouraging people to not wear bibs.

Yes, but they had no mat times and it was not clear that they ran the entire course.

Star wrote:

Of course running without a bib and chip is a problem when you are trying to record times for a large group of people.

What it means is that you will not likely get identified for a result.

But in this case, it was the winners, who were registered, and they were identified.

It's not like some guy in 10th place that didn't wear his bib comes up to the officials, shows the time on his watch and says put me down for this time.

No one's encouraging people to not wear bibs.

thefter wrote:

Yes, but they had no mat times and it was not clear that they ran the entire course.

You can say that about the majority of road races that have ever been run.

Olympic Gold medals have been given out without having an electronic tracking system.

I'll give you an anecdotal example of something related.

I was in a 5K with a few thousand people and my friend had finished third, he said.

They were about to award him first.

What happened was there was a bandit that "won" the race but finished off to the side of the mats (chip timing).

The guy in second, who was registered and had a bib and chip, followed him and missed the finish mat.

My friend, who thought he was third, was the first across the mat.

My friend argued that he hadn't won.

When they discovered that a registered runner simply missed the finish by mistake, they manually put him in the results as first and bumped everyone down one.

The bandit was, of course, left out. My friend was awarded second.

(I was 10th if that matters)

Human heads got together and used judgment to override the computers.

And in this case, human heads got together and used judgement to rightfully DQ these two.BTW, congrats on your 10th place finish.

They were identified at the finish. It's not clear that they were identified at the start or select intermediate points. I'm not suggesting that these two cut the course, but the race director really has no assurance that they didn't. He does know with certainty that they weren't displaying a bib as most races require. A DQ on that basis alone is reasonable. It would certainly get one disqualified in a USATF event.

It seems they had some contact with race officials before the race in regard to picking up bibs. That would have been to time to discuss if they could run bibless. If neither the official nor the runners broached the subject " can we/you legally run in the race" they are all major dimwits and deserve the DQ or bad publicity for the event.

oftenrunning52 wrote:...The course would have disallowed their time.

Further, take the results to get it verified for Trials consideration and explain to them that you only have a gun time and no chip time even though chips were used and see how far you get...

I have looked at the course map. I didn't see anything that would make this course not "record eligible" or a course that one could qualify for the Olympic Trials on. The start and finish are in different places, but it looks like they are within the % separation allowed by both USATF and IAAF. The elevation between the start and finish does not look like it exceeds what is allowed. Can you comment on why you think this course would have disallowed their time for qualifying purposes?

For OT consideration USATF doesn't care about chip times, if a race has them or not, as long as gun time is verified as a legit results (i.e. results are certified as official). In a few cases they have considered chip times for some runners who just missed the standard on gun time and had a chip time that met the standard. I can say this with confidence because we had a malfunction one year at our start line and one of the chip mats on our course that effected ALL our elite women runners, 2 of them ran times that qualified for the trials and USATF accepted both results even though all 25+/- elite women had results that were gun time only without chip backup but the other 2700+/- finishers at our race had chip times as well as gun times.