I raised this question and others in this week's WTW.
Was the Linz Marathon course short?
I’ve often said, “I don’t necessarily need to have a positive drug test to know who is dirty” and it’s also true that when it comes to short courses, “I don’t need a course to be measured to realize it’s short.”
Anyone remember the 2018 Abu Dhabi Marathon? The moment I saw the sub-14 5k split between 35 and 40k, I said the course was short.
Well, it’s possible we had another short marathon this weekend. While perusing my copy of Race Results Weekly super carefully this week, I noticed that editor David Monti wrote the following about the Oberbank Linz Donau Marathon in Linz, Austria, “RRW saw reports on social media that the race route was modified during the race by event organizers. We are not sure if the certified course was actually followed. If anyone has any firsthand knowledge of this please let us know. To be honest, four men under the previous course record is a little suspicious.” (LRC note: seven men actually broke the course record of 2:07:33).
So I decided to do a little research. I agree with Monti — the results are suspicious. Why? Here are the top 3 results.
1. Fikre Bekele, ETH, 2:06:16 – previous pb of 2:06:27
2. Bethwel Chumba, KEN, 2:06:26 – previous pb of 2:09:57
3. Douglas Chebii, KEN, 2:06:31 – previous pb of 2:08:43
In the super shoe era, it’s not unheard of for lots of people to break course records, particularly when the race director was predicting a course record beforehand. It’s also not uncommon for the top three to all PR. After all, the top finishers are running well. But what’s unusual is the way it was done. The leading halfway split was 63:25, which is 2:06:50 pace. At 30k, the pace hadn’t really changed as the leading split was 1:30:14 (2:06:55 pace) and 12 guys were in the lead pack.
However, the 35.1 k split is suspicious as the leading split was 1:45:13 — which is 2:06:30 pace, but 12 men were still together in the lead pack. That’s a lot of guys holding up super well even though the pace is accelerating.
And the finishing time was even faster still. Unlike Abu Dhabi, I’m not 100% certain this race was short. After all, if 12 guys are in the lead pack with 7.1 k to go, it’s not crazy to think it would take an acceleration to win the race. Plus, the weather was ideal. The temps were in the 40s and the race was run in fog (100% humidity) for parts of it and John Kellogg has always told me that moist air is less dense than dry air. So I’m not ruling out it was just a great field with great conditions.
We’ll try to figure out it out and let you know next week. But the negative-split pbs combined with the report of the course being modified mid-race makes me think it likely was a little short, just as it was in 2010.