Late last night, I downloaded the complete splits from The Chicago Marathon. I have yet to review these thoroughly. I have, however started to receive tips regarding questionable results. One that stood out was this finish:
She missed all splits until 40k and is currently credited as finishing as the 78th overall female.
Looking at the photos, it is clear that someone else was wearing her bib.
I have come across many instances of runners selling their bibs, where the recipients placed highly in the age group awards. If I had to guess, I would say this person obtained the bib in an effort to (illegally) pace his friend to the finish. In doing so, he placed very high in the woman’s rankings. He also qualified her for The Boston Marathon.
In the next few days, I will comb through the results in greater detail. I am sure to find more instances like the above to report on.
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With all those missed mats, it seems unlikely this time would stand anyway, I would think.
The results for that bib number already have “PND” (pending) listed in place of the start/finish time and places, so it looks like they’re already on top of this result.
Interesting he isn’t wearing a medal. Gotta be pretty special to not wear a finishers medal in photo with mate wearing medal.
And who the hell runs a marathon with a big red towel?
Probably not the case here, but in the “Chicago Marathon Runners Unite” Facebook group I saw at least two comments where runners said that they unknowingly ran with wrong bibs (apparently the wrong bibs were in the envelopes they received).
So I guess at least a very minimal of the bib swapping cases may be due to such kind of mistakes.
I will say that, while I know it’s every runners responsibility to verify they have the correct bib, the young ladies I received my packet from at pick up never showed me my actual bib and truly just thrust the envelope at me. When I stood there to take it out and check it, one told me “you don’t have to do that. It’s yours.” I was a little surprised by this as most races I’ve run actually make you verify and then sign. Chicago seemed to be handing them out willy nilly!
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