ScottEvil wrote:
Adjudicating between these stories is tough. Evidence for the fixed story, to me, is how improbable that an American wins a competitive marathon and how disneyesque it seems that it happened the year after the bombing. Evidence against is how freaking hard it is to coordinate a conspiracy like this and how there's usually at least one pair of loose lips.
There is nothing to "adjudicate" as there is no evidence the fix was in. People keep writing this crap and saying things like Meb's win is questionable because it was "disneyesque," which strikes me as laughable. If the BAA and John Hancock were going to buy a Disney ending, wouldn't they have arranged for a win by the white, blonde, Massachusetts native who had been pumped up on 60 Minutes, rather than the 38-year-old immigrant with a funny name?
Look at the pre-race press release. They promote Flanagan as a favorite to win and drop a mention of Meb in with the rest of the also-ran Americans.
http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2014/january/john-hancock-announces-2014-international-elite-field.aspxHow could they plausibly imagine that the plan you describe would work? Meb went to the front in New York in 2013 and limped home to a 2:23. Were the Kenyans supposed to start jogging if he slowed down? Why risk telling 10-15 athletes you are going to engage in a conspiracy? Why spend tens of thousands of dollars to have Dennis Kimmetto to join the race fresh off his 2:03:45 course record in Chicago and then offer him $100,000 to lose? Where is this $1.5 million in bribes coming from in a race that clearly has less money available than London? if they'd been told to "make it look believable" why would Chebet surge to just 8 seconds back before fading?
The idea of that specific race being fixed on behalf of Meb on the off chance that he would run a PB at age 38 is beyond absurd.