winning a marathon and disqualified on technicality

Responsible people wouldn't call them technicalities - they'd call them rules. The rules were not followed and he was disqualified. The system worked.

Yeah, it is like that guy down at the Big Rock sport fishing tournament in Morehead City, NC that won a Million dollars and then found out his fishing license had expired.

He tried to renew it online from the boat but it didn't get through in time and he lost the money to 2nd place.

It pays to make sure you follow the rules.

That case is even worse. A guy on the boat that was hired didn't have a license. The guy that caught this fish (and the rest of the boat did).Some people love these little rules. The rest of us find them annoying.

Jolanda wrote:

Yeah, it is like that guy down at the Big Rock sport fishing tournament in Morehead City, NC that won a Million dollars and then found out his fishing license had expired.

He tried to renew it online from the boat but it didn't get through in time and he lost the money to 2nd place.

It pays to make sure you follow the rules.

Ridiculous. The fact is no one reads through the fine print of each and every rule even if those rules are made available to the entrant, which they probably weren't in this instance.

Fact is, the guy sweated out and won an extremely difficult marathon only to have it taken away because AK didn't clear him. Bullshit. He didn't receive assistance on the course, cheat or dope. Something else is going on here.

Is this like how you have to be current with your USATF membership in order to be be counted in the results of a USATF championship race?

If so, I have no problem with this.

asdfasdfas wrote:

That case is even worse. A guy on the boat that was hired didn't have a license. The guy that caught this fish (and the rest of the boat did).

Some people love these little rules. The rest of us find them annoying.

I find them annoying too, but it pays to follow them, literally. That was kind of my joke... the "pays" part. A little pun, idk fml.

[quote]dius wrote:

Is this like how you have to be current with your USATF membership in order to be be counted in the results of a USATF championship race?

No. It's not any kind of championship. It's supposed to be, and advertises itself as, an open prize money race. It would be like the NYC Marathon disqualifying Gebre Gebremariam after winning NYC because the Ethiopian Federation didn't give him prior clearance.

The guy lost out on 8 million shillings ($3480) according to this photo:

http://www.welcometokampala.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=4&pos=1

I think this guy should get paid. He won the race. Kenya shouldn't be able to prevent him from running.

Reversing the decision wouldn't be fair to everyone else who followed the rules. There is more to the story as you can imagine. Uganda and Kenya have tight clearance controls on competing in each others countries due to rampant border jumping, lying about nationalities, etc. To compound the problem of clearance, he lied about his nationality. (all reportedly, could be false)

berol wrote:

Reversing the decision wouldn't be fair to everyone else who followed the rules. There is more to the story as you can imagine. Uganda and Kenya have tight clearance controls on competing in each others countries due to rampant border jumping, lying about nationalities, etc. To compound the problem of clearance, he lied about his nationality. (all reportedly, could be false)

Are there any links to press reports to substantiate claims of lying? Stepping back a bit, can't see why nationality should matter in an open race. If it was a national championship or qualifier event, of course. But any race in the region offering prize money is going to draw competitors from several countries.