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Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

marathoninvestigation.com

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Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#21

Post by potatosareok »

rdtsc wrote: post #8

Why? 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 creat…

Beyond this post, you might be interested in another post in the blog: http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2017/01/WhyIcheated.htm.... The blogger interviews someone he caught cheating in a pretty benign fashion about why he cheated. From that article, and my perspective on it, the answer to:

> That would be hard thing to live with it seems

Is the choice is not between

  1) My great life
  2) My greater life, with some compliments
but

  1) My life that I don't feel great about
  2) My life that I don't feel great about, with some compliments now
Where "my life" is how I'm feeling at that particular moment. I am impressed that to you this concept seems so foreign, for me I can definitely recall moments that people overstated the importance of things I've done and I've accepted the compliments because it made me feel better at times I was feeling down. This to me seems like a minor leap from what I've done.

I've run marathons in the past and my times were awful but back then I was generally a happier person. If I were to be running a marathon today and somehow the timers marked me an hour faster then I really was for example, I might not correct them.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#22

Post by facepalm »

orasis wrote: post #15
xor1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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…

This 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.

You could say that about all sports competitions...

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#23

Post by creo »

Publicly 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.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#25

Post by gabemart »

npunt wrote: post #20

Regardless 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…

I 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.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#26

Post by angry-hacker »

creo wrote: post #23

Publicly 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.

Why do you think this is public shaming?

If so, majority of newspapers are about public shaming. It's actually decent investigation here.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#27

Post by cxseven »

npunt wrote: post #20

Regardless 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…

Sorry to distract from the effort of leaving her name out of this, but your discovery about her followers seems kind of like a funny coincidence considering her last name.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#28

Post by npunt »

gabemart wrote: post #25
npunt wrote: post #20

Regardless 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…

I 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-…

The 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.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#29

Post by otoburb »

potatosareok wrote: post #21
rdtsc wrote: post #8

Why? 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 creat…

Beyond this post, you might be interested in another post in the blog: http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2017/01/WhyIcheated.htm... . The blogger interviews someone he caught cheating in a pretty benign fashion about why he cheated. From that article, and my perspective on it, the answer to: > That would be hard thing to live with it seems Is the choice is not between 1) My great life 2) My greater life, with some…

>>somehow the timers marked me an hour faster then I really was for example, I might not correct them.

People are more likely to draw the moral line in the sand when the error in your favour goes so far as to bump a legitimate winner off the podium. Your scenario above regarding "[...] with some compliments now" seems more in line with "just a slightly better time in the middle of the pack."

I appreciate your willingness to be open and honest about how you'd handle a less egregious situation, but I doubt you'd go this far based on the relative positioning you've outlined.

Re: Runner Disqualified After Claiming 2nd Place in Fort Lauderdale Half Marathon

#30

Post by wapz »

nl wrote: post #24

A much more interesting "marathon cheating" story: http://time.com/3822577/rosie-ruiz-history/ Also related to Boston: http://www.runnersworld.com/boston-marathon/dozens-suspected...

I 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.
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