"The Boston Marathon Was Fixed" thread.

don't you get it, everyone KNEW BUT MEB!

Honestly...! wrote:

If anyone in the running world thinks that Meb was in on a conspiracy to win this race, well, you are WRONG. I can say this and bet my life and that of my wife and five children on it because honestly, today the best person won the Boston Marathon. Sketchers could not out spend Nike and I think that is apparent, not to mention the guy won NYC, 2nd in 2004 Olympics, 4th 2012 Olympics, and 2012 Olympic Trials Champion. COME ON, this tread is F..king Retarded!The guy who started it is literally a COMPLETE ASS.Ole and Idiot who knows nothing about US marathoning history or Meb the man!

Why would the lead pack worry about a 38 year old American who ran 2:23 at his last marathon (NYCM in 2013)?

grox wrote:

Also puzzling how Wilson Chebet went from a 1:21 gap to just 8 seconds and conveniently ran out of gas with two kilometres to go with Meb Keflezighi in sight (also from the Letsrun report). Had this been the only funny thing in this race, that would not raise an eyebrow, but the accumulation of all these incredible events just on the right day are striking.

Not puzzling at all. He nearly got beaten in to third place.

have to ask this wrote:

Why would the lead pack worry about a 38 year old American who ran 2:23 at his last marathon (NYCM in 2013)?

True, but this is a double-edged argument. How could a 2:23 marathoner break his PB by about 30 seconds and run under 2:09 in Boston at age 38? (Actually, his 2013 NY marathon was maybe more of anomaly than anything else.)

grox wrote:

LM wrote:

Field just plain underestimated Meb, who then delivered with the race of his life BY FAR

To you and agip: what you say does carry some weight (although I really have doubts). But still, break your PB at 38 on this day? I have a hard time believing it. (And as an ageing runner, I can tell you I'd love to believe one can break PBs until 38.)

Well, this has nothing to do with the race being fixed, and presumably everything to do with doping.

You're trolling but I'll bite. Why wouldn't the elites consider Meb a threat? Maybe because he went out in with the leaders at 1:05 in New York last year before crashing to 2:23? There was nothing he had done in the last year that would suggest to anyone that he was a threat to run away with the race. He finished two minutes behind Mutai at the NYC Half last month.

More importantly, the idea that the "conspiracy" was to pay off the Africans to stay behind any American who went out at a decent pace is absurd. Why would someone spend all that money for the off chance that an American would bust off a PR? Because if they don't, you're looking at a winning time of 2:11 since no American in the field had beaten 2:10 in the past year. The suggestion of a payoff is absurd. The difference between first and second was $75,000 so you would have to promise that to more than a half-dozen Africans for the plot to work. It just makes no sense whatsoever.

Crying Man wrote:

Your a moran wrote:

Ok so you want me to believe that a whole slew of people participated in a conspiracy to allow a guy who no one thought was capable or running a 2:08, to run a 2:08 and win because he's "American"...

Try thinking some time.

1) Meb is good. Very good. He came in 4th AT THE LATEST OLYMPICS. It is crazy to think that nobody would take him seriously.

2) One does not have to pick the winner of the race in the first place in order to fix it. One merely has to pay off the elite Africans (not difficult to do) to let ANY American go and then hope that at least one American has a good day.

Easy to do? You just have to pay them the winner's share of the race, and then more because an actual win has a much greater value in terms of sponsorship and potential deals.

All this from a marathon known for having a tiny budget and generally struggling to assemble truly monster fields like London.

That doesn't sound likely to me.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not only haven't you provided extraordinary evidence, you haven't provided even ordinary evidence. Or evidence of any kind, really. You're the one with the big theory; the burden of proof is on you. So far, you've refused to shoulder that burden.

Before anybody is going to take you conspiracist dum\bfu\ck losers the least bit seriously, how about filling in the blanks, mmm?

Who fixed the race? Who orchestrated it, and who put up the funds?

How did they fix it? How much more than their customary appearance fee did the "true" elites have to be paid? What instructions were given to the paid-off foreigners? Who decided who should DNF and who should simply run behind Meb?

Did they pick the winner or could it have been any of Meb, Boit, Abdi, Hall, or the others? To what extent were the American runners in on it? I mean, Meb must have known that the Africans wouldn't hunt him down, right? Otherwise wouldn't he have stayed in the pack?

Why did they fix it? Seriously, what would be the fuc\king point? Surely it wasn't done just for a few feel-good headlines, or what? This fix cost millions of dollars and incurred a serious risk to the long-term credibility of the sport and all US sports, so what was the payoff that made it worth all that?

Unless you answer all of those questions, you don't even have a fuc\king theory. All you have is a pathetic case of penis envy.

Guys:

Even if it was fixed, now that Meb won Donald Trump will not confirm him as the "American winner" until Med produces his citizenship papers.

K so Meb ran a 2:20 something in his last marathon and hasn't had a really good race in a while. He and Josphat Boit who has either a 2:11 or 2:13 PR break away from the pack early and the pack lets them go. I don't understand what makes you think that the pack would take them seriously. Because Meb was fourth by three minutes in the Olympics two years ago? Beating some unknown Japanese dude by only six seconds? Why does it not make sense that a guy almost completely closes a gap of 1:21 in a very short distance and then runs out of steam? You've never seen that happen in a race before? Have you not watched much running? So how exactly did the conspiring parties get Meb to run a 2:08 solo? This dude just PRd soloing a marathon. Please tell me how the fix managed to get him to do that. So they let a guy win who somehow managed to get his new PR while soloing the race. Sounds like a solid plan if you ask me. These people should have masterminded the Kennedy assassination.

Doesn't seem like anyone has really compared the splits of all the relevant runners, so I wanted to contribute what I found on the Boston Marathon Results website. Feel free to check there yourself and please correct me if I've made a mistake on the stats.

Here is a summary of the race:

Everyone is together at 10k in 30:29

In the next 5k, Meb and Boit pick up 10seconds on the field by running a 15:18.

In the next 5k (that is, 15k - 20k), Meb gains an additional 22sec on the field by running another 15:18 - this means the field ran only a 15:40 on this segment, shortly after seeing Meb get away. (!)

20k-25k Meb runs 14:55 and gets another 19-26sec on the field.

25k-30k Meb runs 15:10 and gets another 23-30 sec.

30k-35k - Chebet closes 30sec on Meb this 5k, running 14:57 to Meb's 15:27

35k-40k - Chebet runs a blistering 14:29, 4:40 pace, to reduce Meb's lead 8seconds.

40k to finish. Meb runs 5:00 pace this segment, while Chebet slows to 5:01 pace.

The main concern to me in these statistics is from 15k to 20k. I am not familiar with the terrain in this segment, but was under the impression it was downhill. It therefore suprises me greatly that an elite field ran only a 15:40, almost "purposely" letting Meb get out of sight (That is a pro-conspiracy interpretation).

Also worthy of note is Chebet's heroic closing efforts that seemed to end once he approached Meb - however, I think most can agree it is grasping at straws to include this as evidence of some fixing of the race. It is not a huge surprise that he could not close well after his 14:29 effort in closing the gap.

Thoughts?

It's totally obvious the someone Meb's age couldn't win this race. It's also obvious that Meb couldn't run the time he did. It's also obvious that Meb didn't actually win the race at all. It's obvious that other people actually won the race. It just makes sense, right? People think that just because they see something happen that it actually happened that way. Sheesh. What a bunch of morons believe this happened. What's wrong with you people? It definitely was a fixed race, pre-programmed and put on the screen. I talked to people that were in Boston and said this whole thing was a fake. But we know better because we have brilliant people "in the know" that put these threads on LRC. Meb winning Boston - ha, what a laugh!

Poincare wrote:

20k-25k Meb runs 14:55 and gets another 19-26sec on the field.

25k-30k Meb runs 15:10 and gets another 23-30 sec.

30k-35k - Chebet closes 30sec on Meb this 5k, running 14:57 to Meb's 15:27

35k-40k - Chebet runs a blistering 14:29, 4:40 pace, to reduce Meb's lead 8seconds.

40k to finish. Meb runs 5:00 pace this segment, while Chebet slows to 5:01 pace.

The main concern to me in these statistics is from 15k to 20k. I am not familiar with the terrain in this segment, but was under the impression it was downhill.

Thoughts?

The area where Meb picks up ground is Wellesley College. It is a big downhill section. And all the students of the school are out cheering. You can hear them a half mile away. It is easy to drop a fast mile or two. However, if you are trying to run under control, like an elite field, you aren't going to make your move there.

Chrebet started to make his move at 30-35k, which is the hills of Newton and Heartbreak Hill. He attached an uphill section, and then a downhill section. Valiant effort, but he was cooked by the 40k mark. But for Meb, that is how Boston is usually won; it is the attacking and attrition between 30-40k.

At this point in the discussion, anyone believing it is fixed is a troll and probably doesn't run except to the pantry get another bag of Cheetos to stuff into their fat, non-running faces. One cannot have any knowledge of marathon running and the Boston course in order to buy into this drivel.

Crying Man wrote:

Nope. As stated already there is a difference between letting someone take it out too hard and deliberately dropping off a pedestrian pace.

Seriously, check the mile splits for the "chase" pack during Meb's "surge". They deliberately ran absurdly slow. Not reasonably conservatively. Absurdly slowly.

Yes, the 5k splits have been posted and they are contrary to your assertions. Go run the Boston course. Pay attention to history, particularly Boston marathon history.

Given that you apparently know nothing about running or this race, go pick up an issue of Runners World ( or would Cosmo or Shape or Self be more your style) and read up on a Couch to 5k program. That will be at least a start.

The world is flat,the sun revolves around the earth, and the 2014 Boston Marathon was fixed.

Seriously, you guys are f***ing r**ards.

Meb is a boss, won fair and square, and ran with more heart than all the trolls on letsrun could muster up in a lifetime.

END OF THREAD.

I dare anyone who thinks the field ran "absurdly slow" or "pedestrian" to go out and run 26.2 miles at that pace.

When you're done having a heart attack, come talk to me about how they let Meb win.

American wins a race = Conspiracy/Cheating

Anyone else wins a race = Cheating/Doping

Stay Classy Letsrun.

Meb simply got very lucky.

Assuming the race wasn't fixed, if Kimetto/Desisa were in half decent shape they should have gone 1-2.