The runner qualified for the 2017 Boston Marathon at The Light at The End of The Tunnel Marathon. The ‘Tunnel Marathons’ are among the fastest marathon courses and popular among those that want to qualify for Boston. He qualified for Boston with a time of 3:24:xx. He ran Boston with a time of just under 4 hours.
He was not high on the list of runners to review. Accounting for the ease of the qualifying course and the difficult conditions at Boston in 2017, he was not that far off of the predicted time. The Tunnel Marathons don’t have any intermediate timing points to verify, however they are point to point on a closed course, so cheating here would be difficult. I suspect he legitimately qualified for The 2017 Boston Marathon taking advantage of the easier course.
He had another, faster result that was outside of the qualifying window for The 2017 Boston Marathon. Interestingly, he did not chose to improve his seeding with this race. This was his time at The 2016 Pilgrim Pacer.
He ran the 2nd half of this marathon in 1:20:14. This race is a two lap out and back course. It is apparent that he cut the 2nd lap short. With the exception of The Light at The End of The Tunnel and the above result, his 2016 results were consistently around 4 hours.
In 2017, he had one result that stood out. He would use that result to register for The 2018 Boston Marathon.
He qualified for Boston at The Kentucky Derby Marathon with a time of 3:12:28. Below are his splits. (He missed 2 intermediate timing mats).
| Net time | Total Pace | Split Pace | |
| 9.3 | 1:18:01 | 0:08:23 | |
| 26.2 | 3:12:28 | 0:07:21 | 0:06:46 |
I became aware of this result in the past two weeks. I notified both the qualifying marathon and The BAA.
The runner, who was originally assigned bib # 8803 has now been disqualified from The Kentucky Derby Marathon and his bib had been pulled by Boston.
More Have Had Their Entry Pulled
- Alexander Schwarz, the runner that cheated at Boston initially slipped through the cracks and was granted entry. His bib has since been pulled.
- One of the runners profiled in my article on The 2016 Honolulu Marathon was registered. She was removed after I pushed the BAA to verify the result with Honolulu.
- A runner with multiple disqualifications had qualified under the mobility impaired division. It was found she cut the course at her qualifier. She was discovered after she was disqualified from a different race in 2018 and The Race Director looked at prior results.
- A runner missed multiple mats at The 2017 Ottawa Marathon. He was disqualified by the race and his entry was removed. Interestingly, he was initially granted entry even after his Ottawa result was nullified.
There are likely more. On my long To do list related to Boston is to compare the initial entry list with the final list of runners and look for more that have been removed because of cheating.
Tomorrow, I will write on the runners that are still eligible to run in The Boston Marathon despite evidence of cheating in their qualifiers.
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Could you explain why the Kentucky Derby Marathon results look fishy? I get that the pace from mile 9.3 to the finish was faster than the first 9 miles, but what’s the logic beyond that?
Dont need much more. He ran the last 17 Miles at a pace way faster than his past times indicate that he is capable of. He missed 2 splits and only photos are at the finish.
I neglected to mention the missed splits in the article. The pace itself was enough to be suspicious. The missed splits are another key piece.
Curious, did Pilgrim DQ him?
No. They did not.
SMH 🙁
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