As part of the series of posts relating to the 2015 ‘Boston Project’ I highlighted the 2014 Marathon du Mt St Michel.
False Boston Qualifying Times at The 2014 Marathon De La Baie Du Mt St Michel
Basically, we identified 7 runners that were credited with Boston Qualifying Times that did not earn them. 6 of the runners did not run the race at all, and a 7th had his time altered to show a qualifying time.
The French Running site SPE15.fr posted an article on April 19th regarding the original article from Runner’s World. If you follow the link, you can right click it to get the translation.
CHEATERS FOLLOWED WITH THE MAGNIFYING GLASS IN BOSTON AND FRANCE
Today, the same site posted this article.
CHEATING AT MONT ST MICHEL TO RUN IN BOSTON
This article confirms everything that was posted in the original article. The organizer of the marathon says that he changed the results at the request of a Momo Ferchichi of Planet Tours Travel Agency.
Questioned by us, Denis Craveia, from the time of Marathon organizer, does not evade this problem and admits: “Yes, I have accepted this arrangement to please Momo Ferchichi Planet Tour. He explained that these riders needed a reference, they had already run marathons, but they did not have the document validating. “And in the name of very good friendship with Momo Ferchichi, (he ran with it and the Médoc marathon pushing Joël Lainé), the former boss has validated the operation, adding in the official classification of false chronos these runners he knew absolutely not.
Denis Craveia does not hide his disappointment of having been manipulated, “I thought it was of no consequence to us. The race was over. I wanted to please! I plead total naive and stupid … “Aware of this problem for a fortnight, the Briton made contact with ASO, the new owner of the marathon, to explain this mess, and Thomas Delpeuch has presented the situation with the organization the Boston marathon, which would have understood.
I visited the Planet Tours website. They are accepting deposits for Boston 2017. Their Boston page even includes the B.A.A. logo. It is my hope that the B.A.A. would pull any affiliation they have with this agency following this news.
Mohammed Ferchichi denies the allegations
Side Ferchichi Mohammed, accused by Denis Craveia, the bell sound is not quite the same. The creator of Planet Tour organizer of many marathons travel across the planet, does not hide his exasperation with my questions, and his speech is very offensive, “What is the problem?People do what they want. “And when I explain that Denis Craveia warrants have been asked by him to obtain false performance for future clients, he replied repeatedly:” Oh ?? No, I did not ask … “
I speculated in the original article that the runners that obtained these bibs may have been initially unaware. One runner that was contacted by the French publication, claims just that.
But after the publication of this article, Xavier Deltin (contacted before publication but unanswered) joined us to formally contest this version of events, and demand the removal of his name on this article. This engineer repeat the urge: “I paid a benefit. I downstream of the situation.“When asked whether he knew that his name was in the results of Mont St Michel 2014, he replies that no, he had not been informed, and stresses that only paid a benefit to get a bib for Boston. Adding: “It’s a business system. I did not know it was so difficult to have a bib. “
I do intend to take a deeper dive into foreign results to see if this is a widespread problem. As posted in the original article, there are some suspicious patterns of results in at least one other country that I have not yet been able to figure out.
I applaud your work – Only wish there'd be someone with native french language to fix the awful translation.
Very good post
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