Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?

GregTR wrote:

Where's your evidence? wrote:

How do know it is him and not some trolls?

I asked LR to check the IP addresses of those messages which they did and they banned him. He did not post after that for a while until he figured out how to get around the IP ban. He also misspelled my wife's name the exact same way that very same time in a comment on his now removed Boston YouTube video where we had a good banter going, him trying to bait me into saying something bad and me questioning his run. He asked the same question there about my wife using his real name as he asked here. It was him, no doubt in my mind.

Like I wrote before, Mike Rossi did some pretty weak and hasty google research and tried to lash out at me, like he did to everyone else who called him out with their real name attached to it. Had he kept up the doxxing it would have had more serious consequences than a simple IP ban. Remember, I'm the guy who will take an RD to court for no water on the course.

But otherwise I have no evidence, as you would say, it's all circumstantial, you know, like the evidence that got Aaron Hernandez convicted.

GregTR wrote:

Experienced Kip Watcher wrote:

Can someone explain this point? It has been repeated endlessly but nobody has explained how BQs work in this respect.

Suppose I am a race organiser and I say that every Man in a given age category (let's say M45) who runs a qualifying marathon under 3:20 gets in, would I limit the numbers if there were too many qualifiers or would I shrug and adjust the qualifying time for next year?

How does Boston do it?

Boston sets the cutoff at BQ-x depending on demand for each year. The value of "x" varies year after year. So for an M45 it would be 3:20-x and for M18-39 would be 3:05-x.

Since x has a resolution of one second the number of entrants will increase or decrease by hundreds every time the value of x is changed by a single second. So no single qualifier changes the cutoff unless they are the last ones to push the limit over this magical threshold that the BAA set. So even if Rossi's qualification was removed the value of "x" very well could have stayed the same which is the most likely scenario meaning nobody was left out because of Rossi's act.

However if you have a large number of cheaters their cumulative effect can be significant enough to change the value of "x" therefore denying hundreds of qualified runners from the race. Obviously, this is not something that can be accurately determined without looking at everyone at Boston and checking their past performances, an exercise most of us, including the BAA, are unwilling to do. The cost/benefit is simply not there.

somebloke wrote:

RossiCheated wrote:

Because of the large size of the field and many people with the same times, it is not exactly one in = one out. For example, if ten people run x time, that could push out seven people who have a shared and slower time.

But the field has a finite size so if enough people cheat their way in some people must be pushed out.

So it possible that he took a spot from a deserving runner but not certain.

Just to clarify something. There's a chance he took zero spots. But there's also a chance he took several spots, i.e., from all those that submitted times 1s slower than the cutoff. It doesn't matter, in the 'average' case he still took one spot for himself.

Not going into stats/probability details here, but is is safe to say, for the sake of argument, that he INDEED took a spot from someone.

But I thought. . . wrote:

GregTR wrote:

Boston sets the cutoff at BQ-x depending on demand for each year. The value of "x" varies year after year. So for an M45 it would be 3:20-x and for M18-39 would be 3:05-x.

Since x has a resolution of one second the number of entrants will increase or decrease by hundreds every time the value of x is changed by a single second. So no single qualifier changes the cutoff unless they are the last ones to push the limit over this magical threshold that the BAA set. So even if Rossi's qualification was removed the value of "x" very well could have stayed the same which is the most likely scenario meaning nobody was left out because of Rossi's act.

However if you have a large number of cheaters their cumulative effect can be significant enough to change the value of "x" therefore denying hundreds of qualified runners from the race. Obviously, this is not something that can be accurately determined without looking at everyone at Boston and checking their past performances, an exercise most of us, including the BAA, are unwilling to do. The cost/benefit is simply not there.

I thought that, for Boston, even after they picked the qualifying times (down to the second), they took all applicants with those qualifying times and ranked them by qualifying time, and only the fastest got in. Then it notified those who had qualified whether they were actually selected for running. Here's the closest I could come to a BAA explanation of this:

http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2014/september/2015-boston-marathon-registration-closed.aspx

So if Rossi had a "qualifying" time of 3:11:whatever, that put him well above other M45 runners who qualified, and would have then pushed the bottom person, who still qualified but were ranked lower because of a slower time, out of the event. Isn't that what everyone who says "he stole a spot" is saying? What am I missing?

GregTR wrote:

But I thought. . . wrote:

I thought that, for Boston, even after they picked the qualifying times (down to the second), they took all applicants with those qualifying times and ranked them by qualifying time, and only the fastest got in. Then it notified those who had qualified whether they were actually selected for running. Here's the closest I could come to a BAA explanation of this:

http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2014/september/2015-boston-marathon-registration-closed.aspx

So if Rossi had a "qualifying" time of 3:11:whatever, that put him well above other M45 runners who qualified, and would have then pushed the bottom person, who still qualified but were ranked lower because of a slower time, out of the event. Isn't that what everyone who says "he stole a spot" is saying? What am I missing?

Correct. I'm going to use rough example numbers because I'm too lazy to look up the actual numbers but the same principle applies with the actual numbers.

Let's say nobody cheats, for the sake of argument. Let's also assume that the BAA has 22,000 spots available for qualified entrants but they have received 28,000 applications.

All applications will be ordered by time they beat their BQ not by fastest times. So a 30 year old guy who ran a 3:04:50 will get a BQ-0:10. A 46 year old man who ran a 3:20:00 will get a BQ-05:00. A 30 year old man who ran a 2:59:59 will get a BQ-5:01.

Then they rank all 28,000 applicants by their BQ-x time and they start subtracting a second at a time. But the time they get to BQ-1:31 they eliminated 5,923 runners and they still have 22,077 runners that could meet that time standard, BQ-1:31. That would mean every 30 year old guy would have had to run a 3:03:29 or faster and every 46 year old guy had to have ran a 3:23:29 or faster.

So they cut it one more time and the new test is BQ-1:32, 3:03:28 for the open male and 3:23:28 for M45-50. With that one second drop they eliminated another 148 runners. So the field will be 21,929 runners and the time to beat is BQ-1:32. Everyone who ran BQ-1:32 or faster got in and everyone who ran a BQ-1:31 or slower was left out.

Now let's assume that there was a single cheater who "ran" faster than BQ-1:32. If you would eliminate that single person then the qualifying time would still be BQ-1:32 but the field size would drop to 21,928 and the same 148 runners with BQ-1:31 would be left out.

It wouldn't be until you eliminated 77 cheaters like Mike Rossi that you could squeeze in all 148 BQ-1:31 runners for a total field size of 22,000 if you adhere to a hard limit of 22,000.

So a single cheater in itself does not alter the cutoff but a couple dozen collectively does. Given that the cutoff is also based on registrants with self reported results and the results are not verified prior setting the cutoff, false reporting probably accounts for as much of an error as actual cheaters.

With Mike Rossi it's not that he single-handedly denied someone the chance to run Boston but that he cheated and got something that he was not entitled to while others earned their way, either by qualifying or raising money for a charity, to run Boston.

Holy Hobby Joggers, Batman wrote:

You hobby joggers have no clue what happened in Monaco, do you? You follow things like this and not the actual sport.

Go back to Joggers World.

GregTR wrote:

Correct. I'm going to use rough example numbers because I'm too lazy to look up the actual numbers but the same principle applies with the actual numbers.

Let's say nobody cheats, for the sake of argument. Let's also assume that the BAA has 22,000 spots available for qualified entrants but they have received 28,000 applications.

All applications will be ordered by time they beat their BQ not by fastest times. So a 30 year old guy who ran a 3:04:50 will get a BQ-0:10. A 46 year old man who ran a 3:20:00 will get a BQ-05:00. A 30 year old man who ran a 2:59:59 will get a BQ-5:01.

Then they rank all 28,000 applicants by their BQ-x time and they start subtracting a second at a time. But the time they get to BQ-1:31 they eliminated 5,923 runners and they still have 22,077 runners that could meet that time standard, BQ-1:31. That would mean every 30 year old guy would have had to run a 3:03:29 or faster and every 46 year old guy had to have ran a 3:23:29 or faster.

So they cut it one more time and the new test is BQ-1:32, 3:03:28 for the open male and 3:23:28 for M45-50. With that one second drop they eliminated another 148 runners. So the field will be 21,929 runners and the time to beat is BQ-1:32. Everyone who ran BQ-1:32 or faster got in and everyone who ran a BQ-1:31 or slower was left out.

Now let's assume that there was a single cheater who "ran" faster than BQ-1:32. If you would eliminate that single person then the qualifying time would still be BQ-1:32 but the field size would drop to 21,928 and the same 148 runners with BQ-1:31 would be left out.

It wouldn't be until you eliminated 77 cheaters like Mike Rossi that you could squeeze in all 148 BQ-1:31 runners for a total field size of 22,000 if you adhere to a hard limit of 22,000.

So a single cheater in itself does not alter the cutoff but a couple dozen collectively does. Given that the cutoff is also based on registrants with self reported results and the results are not verified prior setting the cutoff, false reporting probably accounts for as much of an error as actual cheaters.

With Mike Rossi it's not that he single-handedly denied someone the chance to run Boston but that he cheated and got something that he was not entitled to while others earned their way, either by qualifying or raising money for a charity, to run Boston.