Cowtown Marathon Winner DQ'd

He should be DQed for being caught.

I do this all the time. I did it this summer at a big summer road race. It isn't difficult.

BS. Standing by policies that have, as their sole intended effect to make the company richer and the customers poorer is not a sign of moral high ground, it is a sign of money-grabbing strategy.

I would probably give the trip to number two and stop short of DQing him. That is, I would say to the winner: "technically, you could be DQed; rather than doing that we will let the race stand by award the trip to the next guy.

More likely between 5-10%. What happens is once you give that option then people start going "Oh, the weather is looking bad, I'll try to transfer" or "I just don't feel like running that race now". People will think that you'll help them find someone to transfer to, etc.

I'm sure you could device a way that either paid for itself or generated some additional income but the real point of the matter is the time it takes. Your idea surely would work if everyone paid attention and did it correctly, I'm suggesting people don't and likely wouldn't.

Sounds good in theory, but my experience has been that you'll get a bunch of people with the "I was so busy, can you PLEASE PLEASE do this, just this once? I forgot about the cutoff.". OK, so you say no, but you still have to take the time. Heck, it's just a couple clicks in the computer right? Why can't you do it right up until race day?

So if everything works "as intended" a transfer should be easy to deal with. My point is there are a lot of unintended situations that get introduced that could take time away from RD or registration personnel at a very inopportune time of the race planning process.

I always feel that race directors should not try to do things they can't do well. That includes putting on the race in the first place. Registration processing is something many races don't do well, since too many think it's just having some dude type some stuff in. That means the timing company often gets a pile of garbage and then gets blamed for the resultant results hose-up. In that light adding something that potentially adds more opportunity to screw things up doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

I have done this a few times. I seem to know a lot of people who sign up for marathons and decide not to do them. Usually, it is a night-before type of thing, where I hear about it, grab their number and run the next day. I ran a sub 2:30 for a fat guy in my office one time, haha.

I would NEVER in a million years expect to actually receive an award. DQ is totally legit.

I think the transferable bib thing is a non-issue that will lead to unintended negative consequences.

Slipperydip wrote:

I have done this a few times. I seem to know a lot of people who sign up for marathons and decide not to do them. Usually, it is a night-before type of thing, where I hear about it, grab their number and run the next day. I ran a sub 2:30 for a fat guy in my office one time, haha.

I would NEVER in a million years expect to actually receive an award. DQ is totally legit.

I think the transferable bib thing is a non-issue that will lead to unintended negative consequences.

I agree. I have run many races that I wasn't entered in. But I would fully expect to be DQ'ed if I won a prize of some sort. It seems pretty obvious to me.

Of course, I also don't cross the line if I'm not entered. I drop out somewhere in the last 1/10.

If every race would allow transfers (or deferrals) it would cut down the likelihood of something like this happening. Lets face it, as expensive as most races have gotten people are going to want to avoid letting their money go to waste.

Races filling so fast make it more likely as well.

The idea of partnering with a local running store(s?) to handle transfers is a good idea. Takes it off the race staffs hands and the store might get some exposure from it.

I have no issues with banditing a race or wearing another runners bib in most cases. What I have an issue is was he ran the entire race in the lead, took away the lead car and timer from the other runners only to fess up up the second he crossed the finish line. The second place guy (no matter how slow his time was) was robbed of leading and winning a race. 99.9% of the knuckleheads cheering don't know his time isn't world class. I would have had more respect for the DQ'd runner if he would have just shut up and accepted the award.

VF Runner wrote:

If every race would allow transfers (or deferrals) it would cut down the likelihood of something like this happening. Lets face it, as expensive as most races have gotten people are going to want to avoid letting their money go to waste.

Races filling so fast make it more likely as well.

The idea of partnering with a local running store(s?) to handle transfers is a good idea. Takes it off the race staffs hands and the store might get some exposure from it.

The 3M Half Marathon here in Austin is hard to get into and always sells out early because they cap it at 6,000 entries. So tons of people enter early on, only to find out that they can't run later, for various reasons. This year, of those 6,000 entries, there were between 4,800 and 4,900 finishers. That's ridiculous. Just partner with a local store and charge an extra $50 to the recipient of the transferred bib.

I had a similar problem when I won my first AG award.

About 3 days later I received an email saying that I hadn't registered.

I'd booked the flights, hotel and everything months before the race but somehow forgotten to register.

Fortunately the only "prize" was a cheap medal, which they didn't ask me to return.

I co-own a race-timing company and a registration site.

We let race directors set the fee, but we allow transfers between runners and let runners change from one race to another. We actually encourage it.

Not a big hassle. We've done it for races up to 8,000 finishers.

It's a service. We only charge $1 for swapping a name and info, while race directors have charge anywhere from free to $10. Some actually see it as additional revenue.

What we want -- and race directors want -- is accurate results. They're not accurate when people run under someone else's identity.

The Broad Street Run which sells out every year with 30,000+ registrations has a transfer process. Free for the sender, $15 for the receiver. Due to medical concerns it is mandatory that the transfer process is followed...just in case somebody passes out they know exactly who they are and what medical conditions they may have. More races should have this.

http://www.broadstreetrun.com/Transfers.cfm

That guy missed a chance to do something memorable. He should have known he would never receive any of the awards if he was not running w/ his own bib. Knowing this he should have gone for theatrics. Lead all the way, then break down in the last 100 yards. Limp, crawl, slither, whatever right up to the line, then get up and walk away, never crossing he line. THAT would make headlines. Or just run all the way to the tape, stop and walk off the course (again, NOT crossing).

It's SOP to require all participants to wear the bib number assigned to them AND sign a waiver and release. All Mr. Downard had to do was register @ the race expo Saturday afternoon. Cowtown was not sold out.

And if you look at a race like the Chicago Marathon, in 2011 45,000 registered and 35,670 finished. So over 9,000 never started (or DNF). Chicago could probably make a lot of money transfering those registrations to other runners if they don't mind the administrative hassle.

Race Limit wrote:

The problem with allowing transfers is that some people will sign up at the start of registration with the intenion of waiting to see 'how they feel' as the race gets closer. that space is taken and there is a hassle for someone who legitimatly wants to race. I support the idea of no transfers to get only those who are serious to actually enter as there are caps on most races, usually restrictions put on by the venue, not the RD.

No. A transferring policy is the exact solution to the problem you are talking about. With a race that is popular people always sign up early not knowing if they are going to be healthy on race day. If you are one of those people who "legitimately" wants to race, then you should sign up early like these other people who apparently do not care as much. However, people always get injured before the race. A transfer fee would allow people who want and can race but did not sign up early enough an opportunity to do the race.

Slipperydip wrote:

I have done this a few times. I seem to know a lot of people who sign up for marathons and decide not to do them. Usually, it is a night-before type of thing, where I hear about it, grab their number and run the next day. I ran a sub 2:30 for a fat guy in my office one time, haha.

I would NEVER in a million years expect to actually receive an award. DQ is totally legit.

I think the transferable bib thing is a non-issue that will lead to unintended negative consequences.

BS. You did not hear about a marathon the day before and then go out and run sub 2:30. If you were in that good of shape i imagine you would already have had a goal race in mind, and randomly running a sub 2:30 would have only hurt your chances of running a faster time for your goal race. BS

Pick it up wrote:in 2011 45,000 registered and 35,670 finished. So over 9,000 never started (or DNF). Chicago could probably make a lot of money transfering those registrations to other runners if they don't mind the administrative hassle.

Sounds good. But profit motives seem to get in the way. The DNS number in 2011 was closer to 7,000. $145 x 7,000 = $1 million in entry fees collected from people who never show up. A tidy little sum that Bank of America Chicago Marathon quietly pockets. They figure, "who's going to say or do anything about it?"

Hopkinton wrote:

Sounds good. But profit motives seem to get in the way. The DNS number in 2011 was closer to 7,000. $145 x 7,000 = $1 million in entry fees collected from people who never show up. A tidy little sum that Bank of America Chicago Marathon quietly pockets. They figure, "who's going to say or do anything about it?"

$30 transfer fee x 7,000 = $210,000 - any resources used= likely even more of a profit.

brogan1 wrote:

The Broad Street Run which sells out every year with 30,000+ registrations has a transfer process. Free for the sender, $15 for the receiver. Due to medical concerns it is mandatory that the transfer process is followed...just in case somebody passes out they know exactly who they are and what medical conditions they may have. More races should have this.

http://www.broadstreetrun.com/Transfers.cfm

And this makes 2 examples, including the post above yours, where a transfer process is working. Hopefully this will catch on and in the next several years we will see most all races adopt some type of process.