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Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon
- bykovich 10y agoReserving a domain to publish this "investigation" seems unnecessary and somewhat troubling -- as does the extent of the investigation itself. EDIT: I was mistaken -- this site is dedicated to ratting out cheating runners. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.
- ljk 10y agoStill better use of resource than sites like http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
- ge96 10y agoJust a note on this. I know stereotyping/judging is innate from what I can tell/heard. Like an evolution/survival thing, is this person going to harm me. While you can judge somebody because they look sloppy/bad, I also envy that "I don't give a ----" mindset, me personally I'm like "Oh... excuse me... can I breathe this air... if it wouldn't trouble you?" I don't like that about myself. At the end of the day we're just animals on a rock.
- xor1 10y agoThis post from the comments does a pretty good job of describing why outing fraudsters is a noble cause: "Lastly, and why I donated, is that this is a nod to the spirit that every serious, non-professional athlete carries with them. Each race we run is one more (or probably one less) opportunity to be as competitive as we can possibly be. We love to be measured. Most know we'll never be getting prize money, or making the Olympics, so this is it for us. These events are the only place we can live out our kooky sports fantasies. And at the core of that -- the one thing that makes it so gratifying when you make a podium, or a top 10, etc. -- is that you believe you have been able to "better the competition" fair and square. What this young lady did last Sunday was to steal that confidence from all of us. And by "outing" her in the fashion that you did... we get to see the right amount of equal, and opposite, force put things back onto an even keel. You weren't unfair in anything you did, instead, you just did what everyone is craving -- to absolutely right an absolute wrong. We even understand her twisted and pathetic motive now. And that's important -- VERY important, because everyone reading this knows that it will happen again. But back at the finish line we'll be saying... "Hey, remember that Derek guy? I think I'm gonna see if he can help us out with what happened at the race today." Thanks :)"
- orasis 10y agoThis is just the flip side of the coin of the cheater: people inflating their egos about something that really doesn't matter. Have fun with it. It doesn't matter if you win and it doesn't matter if someone cheats.
- facepalm 10y agoYou could say that about all sports competitions...
- orasis 10y agoFor non-professional sports I totally agree. It's a hobby.
- facepalm 10y agoWhat is the point of professional sports? The only benefit I can see is learning more about the human physique. But does that alone justify the scale and investment, or could that be had in cheaper ways?
- orasis 10y agoProfessionals get paid either to entertain or as part of an entry fee Ponzi scheme. The latter is what you see in Judo and Jiu Jitsu with the federations raking in the money.
- RubyPinch 10y agohttp://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2016/05/the-differerence-between-holding-people.html http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2016/05/the-differerenc... this article might find some relevancy for this thread
- erdojo 10y agoThere's value in the blog above and beyond outing the occasional cheater. It makes people think twice. It prevents cheating from being normalized, like what happened in professional cycling. It also reminds society that a great number of us still value honesty and integrity, and believe that hard work should be rewarded justly. Too many people today say/do something bad and think a "heartfelt" apology will wash it all away. I'm not in favor of mass internet shaming for kicks. But in cases like this where it's clear it was premeditated and the individual tried to scam their way out of trouble, and there was financial/other gain involved that robbed a more deserving recipient, I'm not bothered.
- wapz 10y agoWhat cheating are you referring to in professional cycling? I only know of all the doping... a blog like this would have no effect on that.
- arjie 10y agoThe water bottle thing. The sticky bottle. That's just one thing. I bet there's more.
- wapz 10y agoWow.. I didn't even know of the sticky bottle. Thanks.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vermontdevil 10y agoAnd electric motors
- erdojo 10y agoYes!
- 10y ago
- markcerqueira 10y agoWow! The sleuthing here is intense and that smoking gun (a purchased high-res version of a photo showing the actual distance covered) is amazing!
- rdtsc 10y agoWhy? What drives people to do it? Is there money on the line? sponsorships for products. It obviously wasn't just a momentary weakness it was an elaborate plan and for what to brag about it at work or on Instagram? But wouldn't she know she cheated every time she thought or talked about it. That would be hard thing to live with it seems Edit: wonder how I'd feel if a friend or co-worker did this. I could see it creating some serious trust issues
- argonaut 10y agoThe article mentions sponsorships.
- rdtsc 10y agoYap saw it and it says it was comped (by work?) as well. How much is that worth in that event vs living with knowing she cheated.
- argonaut 10y agoLiving with knowing you cheated is nothing (0 effect) to some people.
- raverbashing 10y agoIt's a half-marathon, not a University entry exam One race alone doesn't make anyone's name.
- metaphor 10y ago> Is there money on the line? sponsorships for products. Author speculated it may have something to do with some runners club and... >> She wrote a blog post that read like a tourism commercial for Fort Lauderdale. I have confirmed that her trip was sponsored and that at least a portion of her trip and activities were comped.
- rdtsc 10y agoWell that might explain the motivation then. I imagine she could have made a great blog even finishing last.
- metaphor 10y agoThe Garmin 235 image...is that an E Ink display?
- dangrossman 10y agoIt's a 215x180 color LCD, not e-ink.
- metaphor 10y agoThanks for point that out. Edge crispness, lack of glare, and broad daylight contrast of the display was really throwing me off.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoThese are "reflective" LCD displays, where there is a one-way mirror between the LCD and backlight. In daylight, the backlight is actually off and the display is illuminated by the light around you. Pretty common e.g. on all sorts of boating displays (GPS/Radar/Sonar/etc.).
- usrusr 10y agoAnd it's a shame that nobody makes an Android device for the long tail of special interest use cases where a transflective display showing some simple custom app would save the day.
- thyselius 10y agoIsn't this what many entrepreneurs does in their PowerPoints? Fake it until you make it.
- alpeb 10y agoSo true. Unfortunately bullshitting ability usually correlates to success.
- npunt 10y agoRegardless of the cheating, this type of post doesn't fully sit right with me. Given the permanence of record on the internet, this does bring up the issue of how we police bad behavior, and how we incorporate forgiveness into that. That said, the poster was pretty fair, and generally refer to her as "the runner". It definitely reads as an obsessive sleuthing, no doubt in part because there were follow-on discoveries made. As the saying goes, "one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a trend", and it seems there's a trend here. What's interesting is someone in the comments mentioned this: > The majority of those "30K" instagram followers are fake accounts - many of the likes on her recent photos are spam bots. She 100 percent buys followers/likes. My guess is a lot of people probably do this to bump up their social status a bit. It's relatively innocent (if a bit narcissistic), though if its true in her case, it fits a clear pattern. Can't verify though, given it seems she's shut down her social media presence. This is one of those cases where sympathy and revulsion are equally valid emotions. I wouldn't want to be on the other end of the hive-mind, but it is a self-inflicted wound.
- gabemart 10y agoI commend your call to sympathy. I don't like taking a drive-by, salacious interest in a story that doesn't affect me in the least, but will probably have serious, perhaps devastating consequences for the person involved for a long time professionally. I also think it's worth pointing out that the original article, while using photos of the person involved, never uses their full name, so is to some extent not google-able. However, the full name is used in the comments, and then extensively in other media coverage of this story, so this is a moot point. As with the parent, I'm not defending cheating in a competitive race, especially if sponsorship is involved. But ultimately, I can't take any pleasure in a worldwide glee-fuelled shame-fest over what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed.
- npunt 10y agoThe drive-by internet mob can be awful. A just & fair society is one where punishments fit the crime, and internet mobs deliver outsized punishment for all sorts of minor and often illusory things. I worry about how this woman is dealing with this situation, right now, in realtime - perhaps her past behaviors are a sign of some issues she's dealing with. I'm heartened by many of the comments in the blog who advocate for sympathy, as the punishment has already been meted.
- creo 10y agoPublicly shaming people for money is not right way for holding the true, athletic, fair-play spirit of running. While his work and methods are outstanding, it's still ethical burden to ask for donations just to humiliate wrongdoers. Don't get me wrong, i'm a runner myself and i'm all about reporting, but making it opportunistic just doesn't feel right for me.
- angry-hacker 10y agoWhy do you think this is public shaming? If so, majority of newspapers are about public shaming. It's actually decent investigation here.
- ycombinete 10y agoA common answer to this is that news papers are, ostensibly, "public interest shamers". That's the defense.
- PeterisP 10y agoThis seems very much a situation of "public interest shaming", as the cheating directly harmed the legitimate runners of that marathon, and the marathon community has a legitimate interest in shaming/punishing/expelling caught cheaters (in addition to simply removing the fraudulent result) as a deterrent to potential future cheaters. It's similar to disqualifications for fraud or doping in most sports - you don't only remove the current result, you disqualify them from some future events as a 'punishment'/deterrent.
- Nullabillity 10y ago> as the cheating directly harmed the legitimate runners of that marathon Did it really? Did she hurt any of them? Did she even affect their times? Did they lose out on any prizes?
- dagw 10y ago
- nl 10y agoA much more interesting "marathon cheating" story: http://time.com/3822577/rosie-ruiz-history/ http://time.com/3822577/rosie-ruiz-history/ Also related to Boston: http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/dozens-suspected-of-cheating-to-enter-boston-marathon http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/dozens-suspected...
- wapz 10y agoI didn't find this one as interesting. She took the subway and popped out for the last mile. The half marathon we got a lot of info about the pace, cadence, and heartrate that the runner herself submitted.
- npunt 10y agoI think the interesting bit is this: > And while Ruiz never faced criminal consequences for faking her race finishes, she later ran afoul of the law for unrelated reasons. In 1982, she was charged with stealing $60,000 from the realty company she worked for, and in 1983 she was arrested for selling two kilos of cocaine to an undercover detective, per the AP.
- nl 10y agoYes, but she won overall. That's pretty interesting for sheer boldness.
- canuckintime 10y agoTry this one, the 'Marathon Man': http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/06/marathon-man http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/06/marathon-man
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pm24601 10y agoHN: Should remove this post because it is a doxxing post. HN: should not be engaged in internet hating/shaming.
- iamlegion 10y agoAre you serious? A Huffington post editor wins 2nd place in a public race, gets caught cheating, and your first thought is "dont show her name!!" Beyond preposterous. If you cheat in public, be prepared to be outed in public. She deserves absolutely no sympathy, the cheating was done for purely personal gain. And she has cheated before based on her Strata data. A twisted individual but of course the SJWs have to cry about the court of public opinion. Yet you love the court of public opinion when its for something positive...It goes both ways.
- jameskegel 10y agoPlease settle down.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- oxide 10y agoPersonally I am fascinated by marathon cheats. Every time I see a story about someone cheating in a marathon I can't help but wonder what was going through the person's head before, during, and after. I also wonder how often they do it, and why. You don't win any money, there is no incentive I can make out beyond bragging rights. I mean, they aren't exactly footraces, right? It's an endurance test, IMO. Usually for charity, people usually participate for the exercise and show support for a good cause, or so I always assumed. Winning seems totally arbitrary on one hand, but on the other hand I have to assume people do compete on some level, which makes the cheating more sensible, if you think about it in that sense. I cheated once when I was a teenager at an online competitive game, so I'm not completely ignorant about the temptation of cheating. I'm used to people cheating at competitive online games, they're usually underskilled and looking to compensate, underage, just looking to spoil the fun, or some combination of those. Maybe that's the intention here, to spoil the fun for those looking to compete. I suppose I'll never really know, but I can't help but ponder it whenever it comes up.
- nicky0 10y agoIn this case the runner needed to achieve a certain qualification time for another event. So she was under pressure, which led to the poor decision.
- barking 10y agoI wish people would not refer to dishonest decisions as poor decisions. It's an example of spin and was doubtless invented by a PR company for some politician caught with his pants down.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Ntrails 10y agoWhy? If I choose to cheat on a test to pass a class and avoid studying it's a poor decision (from a risk vs reward perspective) and also a dishonest one (from a societal perspective). Many dishonest choices are poor ones. I guess you're arguing that poor implies bad judgement which is a lesser crime than dishonesty? But actually in some cases I'd rather have the latter than the former.
- risingintonatio 10y agoWhat exactly is the point of this post? I second the opinion that this shouldn't be on HN. It's just doxxing the poor girl.
- taoufix 10y agoI thought it was about using the current Tech (GPS tracking/social media) to provide evidence.
- aaron695 10y agoHN should never dox people. HN shouldn't approve of articles doxxing. But I don't think hiding from things happening on the internet is the HN way. Upvoting an article means it's interesting, not that you agree with the views necessarily. This is certainly an article from a site that uses mob justice. And like most mob justice about something pretty silly, it's more about getting outraged and getting to pick on someone.
- iamlegion 10y agoHow is a detectives breakdown of a cheater any different from a breakdown of an exploit that often show up on HN? This Huffington post editor JANE SEO wins 2nd place in a public race, gets caught cheating, and your first thought is "dont show her name!!" Beyond preposterous. If you cheat in public, be prepared to be outed in public. She deserves absolutely no sympathy, the cheating was done for purely personal gain. And she has cheated before based on her Strata data. A twisted individual but of course the SJWs have to cry about the court of public opinion. Yet you love the court of public opinion when its for something positive...It goes both ways.
- iamlegion 10y agoAre you serious? A Huffington post editor wins 2nd place in a public race, gets caught cheating, and your first thought is "dont show her name!!" Beyond preposterous. If you cheat in public, be prepared to be outed in public. She deserves absolutely no sympathy, the cheating was done for purely personal gain. And she has cheated before based on her Strata data. A twisted individual but of course the SJWs have to cry about the court of public opinion. Yet you love the court of public opinion when its for something positive...It goes both ways.
- jomar 10y agoYou would think the turnaround point would be a natural place for the race organisers to put a timing mat. They would capture an extra split time and be able to automatically identify runners succumbing to this temptation.
- massysett 10y agoSome of them do this. The Marine Corps Marathon places mats at the end of long turnaround points and they say they routinely disqualify people.
- gk1 10y agoTiming mats are usually placed at the same distance in every race: 5k, 10k, 13.1mi, etc. Adding extra mats probably means more cost. That didn't prevent the 2016 Philadelphia Marathon organizers from placing an unannounced mat at a turnaround point 22 miles into the race. It helped them catch hundreds of cheaters. And even if you can afford the extra mats, another challenge is where to place them. It's obvious with an out-and-back course, but there are many shortcut opportunities on every loop path, and you can't place a mat at every apex.
- Humdeee 10y agoMany of the bigger city marathons are simply placing them at every 5k interval (20k will be 21.1k). I try and run 1-2 marathons a year and the results are posted minutes after I cross the line. It's always fun to see how many places I creep up as the days go by afterwards from people getting DQ'ed. It's too easy to match pictures to a bib number and then simply look at the splits and wonder why someone ran a record breaking 10 minute 5k near the end after cruising along at a series of 25 minute 5k's. An 8 year old kid can investigate this stuff.
- gjem97 10y agoHundreds of cheaters?! Now I'm starting to understand why marathon sleuthing is the cottage industry that it is.
- 10y ago
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y agoI know nothing about running and this post was like looking into a whole world I did not know existed, all of this tech used in something as basic as running, so many opportunities for entrepreneurs in every aspect of life. Every one lives in their own world, some people wonder why gamers like to finish all side quests in a game, others may wonder why someone cares about running marathons so much, using all this tech, but most interestingly of all, the lengths someone would go to cheat in a run, and the lengths someone would go to uncover it all. The apology on instagram if real is a bit lame.
- purple-again 10y agoThat's the kind of apology you expect from someone that's sorry they got caught. She can't get through the first paragraph without trying to make another excuse about not feeling well. Completely removes any sincerity from the rest of the piece. Different people have different morals, and honor isn't as universal as we would hope.
- Dowwie 10y agoI am not of the few vocal minority here who sympathizes with the person who cheated. Marathons are shared, sacred experiences organized by a community of volunteers. The marathoninvestigation.com author is protecting that which is sacred and shared among the running community. That is a noble cause and worth commending.
- flocial 10y agoI agree but perhaps it's because the majority of apologists do not truly appreciate the challenges of running such races that they place a higher value on an amateur runner's privacy than the results of an arbitrary running event being skewed by a cheater.
- Fraztastic 10y agoDifficulty doesn't make things 'sacred' unless you're obsessed & delusional. It would be difficult to stand on one-leg for 40 hours but it would also be pointless & stupid, not 'sacred'.
- iamlegion 10y agoMany of the comments here are decrying including the cheater's name in the post. We live in the 21st century. People who do shitty things might have to deal with harrassment on the internet. Its the way the wind blows. Does that mean we stop outing cheaters, criminals, and generally bad people? No. The technological environment is their problem. Let them delete their social media if they have to. Jane Seo exploited the race for social status. Shes a Huff Post editor and was recently posting sponsored material on instagram, she got paid for it. Her trip was also paid for. Now..why should she not suffer socially if she tried to exploit socially? Fuck her, she deserves no sympathy. The people crying about the fact that Jane cheated at a public race, publically accepted the 2nd place trophy, and publically writes for the Huff Post, yet shouldnt be publically outed, have some contradictory logic. If I'm reading an article in the Huff Post by a pedophile I should know..so I can be wary of bold claims and moral claims. Same with a cheater. She shouldnt even be writing for them anymore. A cheater doesnt belong in journalism. Integrity is huge in journalism.
- kriro 10y agoFor me the most interesting tidbit is that she biked the entire race afterwards in a cover up attempt. Are there any studies on doing something wrong and escalating it with coverup attempts? Or is there a name for this that I'm not aware of? I know it has to be the theme of at least one classical drama...sort of a reverse "Hans in Luck" of sorts...I dunno. I have witnessed this pattern before and the spiral that person went on was completely out of character and a progression of small pieces. I wouldn't be shocked if a good number of serious crimes had almost comically trivial root causes that escalated that way.
- arctangent 10y agoI suppose the definitive example of this would be the Watergate scandal [1], which led to the coining of the phrase "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
- hiharryhere 10y agoMarcus Einfeld comes to mind. A formerly well respected Australian judge who perjured himself over a $77 speeding ticket by blaming it on dead Americans and received 3 years in prison for the string of lies he told to trying to cover it up. Madness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Einfeld#Criminal_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Einfeld#Criminal_convic...
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoEveryone should read this. It's hilarious. First the judge tried to blame Teresa Brennan, "an old friend" from the USA. Turns out she was dead, and he knew it. But then he claimed that he had lent his car on that day to a different Teresa Brennan, whom he claimed also lived in the USA, and who had also died. When various TV shows have comically stupid plot twists I sometimes struggle with "suspension of disbelief". But this is one of those cases where truth is far stranger than fiction. You'd never believe someone in such a position of trust could be so stupid over something so petty.
- asdfasdf32r3 10y ago
- southphillyman 10y agoI did this by accident before, at a 5K. I arrived to the race so late that when I crossed the starting line to BEGIN the race it registered that as my finish time and I'm posted on the result website as finishing in 2nd place.
- massysett 10y agoYou didn't "do this" unless you also stood on a podium, lied to race officials, and tried to cover it up.
- stordoff 10y agoAccidentally registering a false time (even accidentally cutting the course and claiming a prize, which would be more than you did) is very different to cutting the course and then cycling the route to falsify GPS records.
- agentgt 10y agoNot to be too tangential but I'm actually looking for a good running watch (I'm just getting back into running) and possibly heart rate monitor + gps. I noticed in the article they show her watch (to show the discrepancy in distance). What watch is that? What is the running software? EDIT (I missed the Garmin 235 link and paragraph). I am not sure how I missed it over and over (I was using my phone) and yes I feel dumb for posting the comment.
- rsync 10y agoMay I piggyback on this tangent ? I really want a real-time heartrate monitor but have been convinced that the wristwatch heartrate monitors are quite inaccurate compared to the chest straps ... But I also need a simple timer/chronograph. Do I need two devices or is there a chest strap HR monitor that has a simple timer/watch/chrono built into it ?
- agentgt 10y agoI did some careful examining of the picture (after commenting) and it looks like she is wearing a high end garmin watch. That is sort of the problem. There is super cheap that timex just does time, fitbit/garmin/polar that requires constant charging and is buggy and then there is the ultra highend garmin watches that are $500+ (the fenix series). I just can't justify $500 (Garmin Fenix) as I only wear watches when I run. Looks like Amazon sells them refurbished though.
- ward 10y agoIt says so in the article, it is the Garmin Forerunner 230 or 235. The 230 uses a chest strap for heart rate, the 235 has optical heart rate built in. The software is Garmin's. To connect the watch and get the data off it you can use Garmin Connect (works via your phone and bluetooth) or you can connect the watch with a wire and use it as you would a regular hard drive. The files on a Garmin are saved as .FIT files. I use a Garmin Forerunner 225 and am quite happy with it.
- agentgt 10y ago
- adenadel 10y agoThese sorts of situations keep appearing with lots of attention. One of the most (in)famous instances has a thread with thousands of pages on the Letsrun.com forum http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6479539 http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6479539 There's also the case of the guy who was faking his run accross America http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7355147 http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7355147 For whatever reason, this group of people in the online running community gets really into discovering who is cheating.
- hyperliner 10y agoI am surprised by the new, gentle and forgiving approach of the crowd towards this runner here. It contrasts drastically with some attacks I see here against some politicians or corporate leaders when they fail to meet the HN-echo chamber standards. Also, isn't this what the media usually does? Find dirt and expose it, damn the consequences to those involved? Damsel in Distress?
- davesque 10y agoWhat's the value of making this a public matter? Is this a really major half-marathon or something?