If they can measure it after the fact and determine it's 13.5 feet short, why not measure before the race and adjust accordingly? Do the professional wheel rolling measurers hate black people or just Americans?
Seriously though, the course was supposedly short by less than 1/10 of 1%. What implement are they using to measure with that sort of accuracy on a road course?
A wheel with a Jones counter. Google how road courses are measured.
My guess is that over time the start and/or finish line was put in the wrong spot .
Turnaround was in the wrong spot. Race director only realized it when he watched the race video.
http://carlsbad.competitor.com/2014/07/18/lagats-5k-road-record-will-not-be-ratified/
That's messed up. Was the course definitely longer when the record was set? I know that road races were not very accurately measured in many cases in the 1970s and 1980s, not sure about the 1990s (when the record was set?). Of course, so many smaller road races are mismeasured now.