If you go to the Philadelphia Marathon Results page, you are greeted with the below statement.
My latest data pull confirms that they have removed all of the obvious course cutters from the results as well as some other runners, presumably based on the non public data from the Manayunk turnaround.
I do agree with their statement that the majority of the runners that skipped from the 13.1 timing mat to the finish likely did not do so with the intent to cheat. It was a miserable day, and most likely just wanted to call it a day.
I also want to make it clear that it is not my intent to ’embarrass’ this group, or any group of runners. I never focus on runners that have a bad day and cut their race short. I focus on those that purposefully cheat, and claim false accomplishments.
As I acknowledged in my previous post, I have been critical of The Philadelphia Marathon in the past. As such, I feel it is my obligation to acknowledge when they get it right. This year, they got it right.
Still, I am planning a follow up on a serial cheater that returned to Philly, and I may focus on a couple of other specific cases.
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Great news! Well done Philly!
A good way of handling this as opposed to the name and shame approach taken by a self appointed internet vigilante
In last year’s Philly recap post there was a call out of a woman whose vast improvement in the second half of the course indicated course cutting and a screenshot of her time was posted (3:35:08 clock). She was never pulled from the results and subsequently used this time to register for Boston. This woman is a runner in one of the more prominent NYC running clubs.
Wondering why Philly didn’t pull her from the results? And it’s a shame because she took a Boston spot from someone who deserves to be there.
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