Army West Point Cheated at IC4A Championships

Apparently Army's coach accidentally entered him in both events earlier in the week when entries were due thinking that he could scratch whichever event he decided to not run. They decided to run the 10 to defend Petrella's regional ranking, as he is on the bubble to make east regionals. Army's goal was not points.

I also saw that when he started running in lane 2 to let guys lap him in the 5k, the officials forced him to stay on the rail to obey "honest effort" rules, which I thought was the dumbest rule on top of making him run in the first place. Why let him disrupt the race as well if he is just trying to be courteous?

I think the IC4A is taking themselves too seriously. No one cares about who wins the team title anymore, just let guys scratch so they don't make a fool out of themselves and the meet. It would have meant something to win 20 years ago, but not anymore. In this situation, I think the meet officials played themselves, not Army.

I think the no call was fine if it was an honest mistake by the coach.

But they had to make him run.

Letting him scratch and then run is too blatant of a rules violation.

IC4A is taking themselves too seriously?

It's still a legit championship meet and not an invitational.

I agree with the fact that he had to run, I just think that he should have been allowed to run in lane 2 to not make guys actually racing to have to go around him. If he's already breaking the honest effort rule by running slowly, why make him obey every other aspect of it? Also, I've seen olympic 10k finalists pull out to lane 2 in order to not disrupt the front of the race many times. Is that not honest effort?

Star wrote:

I think the no call was fine if it was an honest mistake by the coach.

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A D1 coach not knowing the scratch rule is not an honest mistake. Not knowing the rules of the sport you coach, is negligence.

The only pass I can give the guy is if the schedule had not been put out yet and he just assumed there would be time to recover between races. Running them back to back is absolutely dumb and one could rightfully assume that wouldn't be the case.

Even the most meager conference meet is more serious than IC4A. IC4A is a last chance meet, nothing more. Its not a championship meet anyone aims for. Every team at that meet would have rather won their conference meet than the IC4A meet.

Because regionals is really NCAA championship first round and not a regional.

Kvothe wrote:

Even the most meager conference meet is more serious than IC4A.

And therefore they don't need to officiate the rules?

Do we really want our military deciding which rules are stupid and not worth following?

I wonder if the officials didn't DQ and other teams didn't protest for fear of being labeled unpatriotic and not supportive of the troops.

They did officiate and did not DQ him. Give him a break.

Official Official wrote:

They did officiate and did not DQ him. Give him a break.

The person I responded to wanted to let him scratch the 5 and still run the 10 because it wasn't a serious meet.

I'm fine with the no call as it happened.

I think I remember Kyle Merber jogging the 5k at this meet and then racing the 1500 next day

Or maybe it was Regionals? Kind of a dumb rule- but always annoying when someone enters in a meet, doesn't compete, and bumps someone else out of spot.

Relevance of meet doesn't matter. Last year's 10K Nationals. Two BYU guys jogging and talking together during the 10K . One or maybe two of the four BYU guys in the 10K competed with an honest effort. relative to their ability. The other two did not compete relative to their ability (both sub 28:45 seeds and one made the 10K podium in 2017). The BYU guy that for sure competed in the 10K finished last in the 5k. The 10K joggers finished 8th and 12th in the 5K.

Tough judgement call to make, but everyone really knows, especially the runners and the coach.

No harm, no foul in this case. If ten teams had entered their top guy in the 5000 and 10000 and had them all jog the 5000 it would have been a problem.

Breaking a rule like this isn't a problem if only one team does it, if multiple teams do it, it becomes a big problem. It is imperative that the coach follows the rules, and not to try and game the system knowing there is only a small chance the rule will be enforced. This is cheating and it was a very selfish move on Army's part.

I'm glad for the runner that he wasn't DQ'd, I wish there were some ramifications for the coach/program.

This reminds of one of the prefontaine movies where Bowerman is like "Don't you think Viren is smiling in his head knowing he get's an extra day of rest?"

Pre: "WHAT THATS NOT FAIR"

Spineless spike wrote:

Have you watched the BYU guy knocking out 28 minute 10ks this year? They aren’t wearing spikes. McDinald won the Big 10 meet in flats.

Did he look relaxed?

The Guru Matt James wrote:

Do we really want our military deciding which rules are stupid and not worth following?

Military members have to do that ALL the time.

No valid excuses. The Army coach Mike Smith has been coaching way too long to not understand the rules. The IC4A sent out numerous emails with a scratch deadline where he could have scratched the 5k by 10am Friday and still would have been able to race the 10k.

Instead, he waited until the descending order lists came out before trying to scratch. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but it certainly looks like he wanted to see who was racing in each event before making a decision.

The regional ranking goal is even worse than the points goal since it is a dead meet. He cheated the system in order to give himself the best shot at qualifying for regionals. Seems like he saw some people could potentially be threats to beat Ben's time in the 10k so he jogged the 5k in order to try qualifying or defending his rank in the 10k. That is unbelievably dishonest and is DEFINITELY cheating.

The IC4A is a useless meet now, but they still should enforce the rules. In this case, Army screwed over every runner in the 10k by letting Ben cheat. Those runners might have been able grab a regional qualifying mark if Ben didn't change the race.

petrellawatcher wrote:

my guess is that they had him entered in both and were planning on him running the 5k, but got there late so instead of racing the 5k he used it as his warmup jog.

His team was there all day. The 5k started at 6pm too.

Yeah it seems pretty clear that they wanted to see who was entered in both events and then decided to mail in the 5000m. I don't respect that.