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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [zedzded] [ In reply to ]
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zedzded wrote:
Which makes you wonder, how many cheats are out there "flying under the radar" finishing 5th, 6th in their AG and no-one notices/cares?

I'm starting to believe there are a ton of them. After thinking about this issue I was thinking back to the race I very nearly cut the course myself. Full xxxxxman in 20xx. 4 lap run, only around 60 people in the race, no timing mat anywhere except the start of each lap. So I went to look at the results. A woman I trained with also did the race. During the race she was gaining on me fast. For over a decade I have had these results and never thought twice about it. Today I noticed that after a 7:29 bike split she ran a 3:46 marathon. 3rd fastest of the day, fastest woman by 8 minutes, 18 minutes faster than the third fastest woman. 20 minutes faster than a standalone marathon she did 2 months later. I'm now pretty sure she cut each lap out in the dark corn field lined roads where no one was around (seriously, it could have been the setting of a horror movie), she gained about the same amount on me every lap. So if people are willing to cheat in what had to be the saddest full ironman length race ever, what race would they not cheat in?

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [j p o] [ In reply to ]
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Several years ago, in a half in France (a B at the time) there were 3 guys chasing me for a bit on a run course that was key shaped. No one passed me, and just as I run down the finish, they were all there running down about 400m ahead of me, just outside the top 10. I said something to the RD, to no avail. But I told them what I thought and they just smirked. I've also seen on at least 2 occasions, people disappearing on a multi loop course to only reappear later, still on the same pace. I think that's actually a very very common occurrence.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [zedzded] [ In reply to ]
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zedzded wrote:
Bryancd wrote:
Slowman wrote:
A number of you have shown interest in helping to defray legal costs Slowtwitch might incur associated with this issue. I’m flattered. I appreciate the gesture, but we will fight this battle ourselves and bear our own legal costs. Thank you all.


Dan, if you do decide to write a piece about this, I have a few friends who are very much involved in the BC triathlon scene and have been told there were serious questions about her for years apparently. They even have race photographs from a MTB race where she "lost" her number to hide the fact she didn't complete laps. They are also friends with James who did the initial sleuthing. Julie is being DQ'ed from other local events and her local community is very much aware of what has happened. I think you would receive a lot of supports if you did sleuth further, assuming the litigation risk is manageable.




This unfortunate competitor was the only rider out of 1300 competitors to "lose" their race number.


Was that at this race, where she knocked 25 minutes off her previous year's time, won her age group by over 12 minutes, and the next three AG places were separated by less than 3 minutes?

http://www.webscorer.com/...=153302&gender=F
Last edited by: Kay Serrar: Sep 1, 15 5:19
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [j p o] [ In reply to ]
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j p o wrote:
zedzded wrote:
Which makes you wonder, how many cheats are out there "flying under the radar" finishing 5th, 6th in their AG and no-one notices/cares?


I'm starting to believe there are a ton of them. After thinking about this issue I was thinking back to the race I very nearly cut the course myself. Full xxxxxman in 20xx. 4 lap run, only around 60 people in the race, no timing mat anywhere except the start of each lap. So I went to look at the results. A woman I trained with also did the race. During the race she was gaining on me fast. For over a decade I have had these results and never thought twice about it. Today I noticed that after a 7:29 bike split she ran a 3:46 marathon. 3rd fastest of the day, fastest woman by 8 minutes, 18 minutes faster than the third fastest woman. 20 minutes faster than a standalone marathon she did 2 months later. I'm now pretty sure she cut each lap out in the dark corn field lined roads where no one was around (seriously, it could have been the setting of a horror movie), she gained about the same amount on me every lap. So if people are willing to cheat in what had to be the saddest full ironman length race ever, what race would they not cheat in?

I see it every year at the Deer Creek Oly in Ohio. Two loops on the bike, which includes a short out and back into the transition area, then back onto the course. Always repass somebody that I've already passed once, usually just a bit after going through the out and back myself. It's clearly marked, and it's always mentioned in the pre-race meeting. But there is no timing mat there. So, if people are willing to cheat in local Oly race, I'm not surprised that there are many that will cheat at longer distances. I do appreciate the number of timing mats WTC races have...I don't see how you could cheat on the run, for example, at IM Wisconsin...timing mats everywhere, especially at every turn around point.

Spot

___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [spot] [ In reply to ]
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If the rules around having a chip are not enforced, then the timing mat placement means very little.

I agree that WTC does a great job with the mat placement, but any situation where an athlete is able to contest their way to a position with no timing data to support it needs to stop. The policy should be black and white when it comes to this. In almost any race, you can pick up a back up chip in transition if you lost it on the bike or swim. The notion that you lose it while running is pretty far fetched. Although possible, I would say it is incumbent on the participant to be aware enough to keep the chip in their possession for at minimum the run course and through the finish.
Last edited by: SasquatchRuns: Sep 1, 15 5:46
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [j p o] [ In reply to ]
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j p o wrote:
So if people are willing to cheat in what had to be the saddest full ironman length race ever, what race would they not cheat in?

when my daughter was running cross country in HS, I recall watching many runners cutting the course on certain courses, each year without fail. Especially where the 'out' & 'back' paths were close together and they could easily hop from the out to the back. Usually this was the BOP runners, who just want to finish. But not always. The number of runners who did it was quite surprising to me at the time.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [BrianB] [ In reply to ]
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“What I can tell you is that I know the race I ran throughout the whole course,” she said in an email. “I know how I performed and the training that went into that performance, and I am confident in the results as they were originally announced. I am an athlete, a mom and community member who lives by strong values. I am grateful to those who know me as a person of integrity, and who have remained strongly supportive of me.” - See more at: http://www.squamishchief.com/...sthash.s423qGSR.dpuf
Did anyone else catch the unnecessary "throughout" in her statement? Didn't claim to run the whole course, but throughout the whole course...

Tony
http://www.triathleteguru.com
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [tonythetriguy] [ In reply to ]
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You mean just like Lance used to quote 'I've never tested positive' rather than the ouright denial of all wrongdoing.

Yep.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [sylvan] [ In reply to ]
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sylvan wrote:
Slowman wrote:
timing company people are very busy on race, day. their mandate is to get the results right, per the information at their disposal...
Yeah, but getting the results right includes not having people in the results who didn't do the full course. At the Ironman races we run a script intermittently once the finishers start coming in. It lists everybody who misses any of the timing wires on the course, at any time, all day. We then go through their race segment by segment to figure out what happened. They either get DQ'd right there or if it looks legit they get marked as OK. That's the one time the timer will do the DQ's and not wait for a ref or RD to do it. At the end of the night that script has to come up blank - either people are DQ'd or marked OK. That's the only way somebody with a missing split isn't flagged by that script. After the race Jimmy Riccitello gets a list of all the DQ's and he follows up. And if anybody doubts it, he does follow up - even if it's a plodder at the back of the pack. Jimmy emails and calls me all the time to ask for detailed timing information on DQ'd athletes or just to hash it out back and forth to make sure that we get it right. We both want all the short cutters out and everybody who does the full course in.

Dev mentioned that Marc told him that 5-10 athletes will get DQ'd on average at a given race. Usually it's at the low end there, but I've DQ'd up to 30! Seriously. In a full-on Ironman 70.3. How many of those get reinstated later? Usually zero. It ain't rocket surgery. If they're missing split times and their time from the split before to the split after is out of whack - faster than you'd expect based on the rest of their race - they get nuked. I'd be happy to reinstate somebody if they can produce a GPS file that shows that they did the whole course but that doesn't tend to happen. I've seen more bogus screen shots of somebody else's Garmin activity (two occasions, including T3 of course) than actual tcx/gpx files or links to a real GPS activity proving that somebody did the whole course (zero occasions). The chips we use don't miss many reads and if, for whatever reason, there is a miss, the running/cycling speed from before and after the miss will tell the tale. Usually they'll go out at 9 minute pace, finish at 11 minute pace, disappear for the middle split and would need to be going 7 minute pace for the time they disappear. It's rarely hard to figure out. There might be 1 of those on average at a race, sometimes none, sometimes it's ridiculous (cough, Miami). The most common anomalies are people who finish the race after failing to do a lap. I've had people finish IMAZ after one lap of the three lap run. In a busy race I don't bother putting much thought into a situation like that. Finish after 1-lap? DQ. If they email after the race saying they just wanted to DNF and give their chip back and would rather be a DNF than a DQ, I'll go look at Finisherpix and look for a pic of them posing with a medal. I'll switch them to a DNF if there isn't one. If there is one, they stay a DQ and Jimmy gets informed that they tried to get a DQ overturned despite posing for a finish pic with a medal. Don't even think about it!

OK, Vancouver 2014. Why no DQ for the athlete in question? I asked the timer and he couldn't clearly remember but it looks like he didn't have a wireless connection to the one split point on the bike course, so there was a delay getting the times from there. In his defense, that Vancouver race is a tough day. Look at the list of events: Long Distance (70.3) @ 6:30 am; Aqua Bike @ 6:30 am; Olympic @ 7:30 am; Sprint @ 8:04 am. So there's a lot to do and by the time he downloads the split times from the bike he's probably already printing awards and putting out whatever other fires have popped up. He'd check for missing laps on the bike, but wouldn't have necessarily checked for fast laps. That race was using the older ChampionChip technology which is not conducive to multiple bike splits, so there was only the one, in a parking lot at the start of each lap. If there was one at the far end of each loop, the two shortcut laps would have had a missed read and a more obvious DQ situation. Lacking that, the reason that ugly text file has a ranking position for each split is so that you can easily scan up and down the full list of results looking for single digits where there shouldn't be single digits. Like those two anomalous 1st place bike splits which should have meant insta-DQ. So, no doubt, we should have caught that one. If there's a situation like a 2-lap in-water swim with no exit for lap timing, or if there's a crazy mickey-mouse-head-shaped bike or run course that doubles back on itself, it's possible that people can cheat and not be flagged by missing a wire. In that case we also have a script to list the fastest times for every intermediate segment. That's a bit harder to sleuth through but for example it'll show the time and pace/speed for the segment alongside the overall time and pace/speed for the discipline. So if somebody has the 30th fastest segment and the 400th fastest run overall it'll make you wonder. But then what? If they have a Kona spot and they go from 7:30 miles to 6:00 miles to 8:00 miles I would probably DQ them and wait for the appeal. If they're MOP or BOP, honestly, I'll probably let it slide as long as they don't miss a wire and aren't anywhere close to a rolldown slot. And if it's a big 70.3 I probably won't get the chance to analyze those splits at all. So there's some rudimentary technology at work but it relies on the organization and insight of the timer. If somebody wants to design software or a script that will take an import of every single split time recorded during the race, analyze it and spit out a list of athletes whose pace variance in a discipline is higher than an agreed upon standard deviation, OK. It's easy to spit out the raw data, but you need to get the timing companies and RD's and race mgmt corp's to agree to it.

Thanks for a great explanation. You mentioned that your chips don't miss many reads - is there a expected failure rate? (1 missed read for every 500 racers, for example?) Julie Miller and Mike Rossi seem to base their claims on a "it's not my fault" defense, but I think the statistics tell a much different story.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [NJSteve] [ In reply to ]
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Hi NJSteve,

I believe Sylvan uses MyLaps active chips. This means that there is a battery in the chip that emanates a signal to the RFID reader. This is called active RFID. Most timing companies use passive RFID, which means that the RFID reader looks for chips to come into the electrical field and register. The active system is very near 100% capture of data. I would be surprised if they miss one time stamp in all of the segments of a triathlon. Where the active and passive systems really differentiate is the swim data capture. I believe all passive timing systems have some degree of difficulty making that swim read, due to water on the chip. With active systems, the problem of water on the chip is eliminated, as the battery is emanating a signal.

Passive systems generally read well over 99%, often above 99.8%.

For this and many other reasons, Sportstat is the top timing company in the world.

Thanks!

Mark

Fast-Finishes.com
Triathlon and Running Race Timing
Athletic Event Management
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [themuse1] [ In reply to ]
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Thank you -- impressive (and telling).
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [themuse1] [ In reply to ]
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Pretty much the same system used at Paris Marathon. In 2011, a newspaper had published the stats and reported that 486 runners had been disqualified for cheating (cutting the course).
The article had been taken down soon after.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [tonythetriguy] [ In reply to ]
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tonythetriguy wrote:
Quote:

“What I can tell you is that I know the race I ran throughout the whole course,” she said in an email. “I know how I performed and the training that went into that performance, and I am confident in the results as they were originally announced. I am an athlete, a mom and community member who lives by strong values. I am grateful to those who know me as a person of integrity, and who have remained strongly supportive of me.” - See more at: http://www.squamishchief.com/...sthash.s423qGSR.dpuf

Did anyone else catch the unnecessary "throughout" in her statement? Didn't claim to run the whole course, but throughout the whole course...

Maybe she meant this:

"What I can tell you is that I know the race I ran threw out the whole course,”
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [tonythetriguy] [ In reply to ]
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tonythetriguy wrote:
Quote:

Did anyone else catch the unnecessary "throughout" in her statement? Didn't claim to run the whole course, but throughout the whole course...

Yes. Sounds like she dancing through parts here and there. Very sneaky. A very weird statement in what she didn't say. She is confident of her training. Really?

What does that have to do with the fact that she cheated and didn't complete the course. And lost her chip.
Last edited by: Ty: Sep 1, 15 7:44
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Slowman wrote:
A number of you have shown interest in helping to defray legal costs Slowtwitch might incur associated with this issue. I’m flattered. I appreciate the gesture, but we will fight this battle ourselves and bear our own legal costs. Thank you all.

Dan, if ever you do change your mind, I would certainly contribute. But that's not the main reason I am posting here.

If she decides to go after other STers, that have only posted facts, I would certainly be willing to contribute to helping them. I can't speak for others but I am sure many others would as well. If the likes of JayPee get bullied with lawyers, I suspect the ST community will stand up. I think she made a big mistake lawyering up. She may want to reconsider that strategy.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Slowman wrote:
to no one in particular:

i attempted to hide a post and hid the fruit of these posts as well, which turned out to be a number of recent posts. very sorry about that. unfortunately it is not possible to reattach it. very sorry about that. none of you wrote anything wrong. just my mistake.

Dan,
one of my posts was deleted where I said I was running through the numbers on the Ironman Canada 2013 run. I believe the existing data, publicly available, should be sufficient to clear/condemn that run.

Finisher pics run photos give you bib numbers of people before and after her, and those bib numbers have run splits. Combine the two and you can see when people should be intersecting each other on course, and this should allow you to reconstruct virtual splits for JM (within a margin of error). I've started with ~5 bibs before and after for each different run photo location (about 5 of those). If the results are inconclusive more bib numbers might be needed. From this we should be able to construct a narrative for the run (or eliminate possibilities).

Time stamps and location of the photos would help, but isn't necessary. Maybe that info could be used later to verify my analysis.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [tonythetriguy] [ In reply to ]
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Not sure if any of you had followed the thread that started at Let's Run a day ago, but it looks like that one has now been pulled.


http://www.letsrun.com/...d.php?thread=6724919
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [spot] [ In reply to ]
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spot wrote:
j p o wrote:
zedzded wrote:
Which makes you wonder, how many cheats are out there "flying under the radar" finishing 5th, 6th in their AG and no-one notices/cares?


I'm starting to believe there are a ton of them. After thinking about this issue I was thinking back to the race I very nearly cut the course myself. Full xxxxxman in 20xx. 4 lap run, only around 60 people in the race, no timing mat anywhere except the start of each lap. So I went to look at the results. A woman I trained with also did the race. During the race she was gaining on me fast. For over a decade I have had these results and never thought twice about it. Today I noticed that after a 7:29 bike split she ran a 3:46 marathon. 3rd fastest of the day, fastest woman by 8 minutes, 18 minutes faster than the third fastest woman. 20 minutes faster than a standalone marathon she did 2 months later. I'm now pretty sure she cut each lap out in the dark corn field lined roads where no one was around (seriously, it could have been the setting of a horror movie), she gained about the same amount on me every lap. So if people are willing to cheat in what had to be the saddest full ironman length race ever, what race would they not cheat in?


I see it every year at the Deer Creek Oly in Ohio. Two loops on the bike, which includes a short out and back into the transition area, then back onto the course. Always repass somebody that I've already passed once, usually just a bit after going through the out and back myself. It's clearly marked, and it's always mentioned in the pre-race meeting. But there is no timing mat there. So, if people are willing to cheat in local Oly race, I'm not surprised that there are many that will cheat at longer distances. I do appreciate the number of timing mats WTC races have...I don't see how you could cheat on the run, for example, at IM Wisconsin...timing mats everywhere, especially at every turn around point.

Spot

Same venue, same RD. It was also the same venue and RD for one of the famous Twitch hunts (Newbz maybe?) There might be a pattern here.

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [sylvan] [ In reply to ]
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Wow! Thanks for that. I would not have thought that you guys would have the time to go to those lengths to catch "bad results". I definitely like looking for race photos of them proudly showing off their finishers medal. That's awesome.

There is a fine line with this stuff. There are definitely people cutting the course to gain an advantage, and there are people who get lost, and there are people who can't count loops, and there are people who quit, but still cross the finish line, and there might be a very small number of people who have very oddball pacing or other issues that cause weird splits. I applaud your approach of DQing people based on the evidence and letting them appeal, and I am very happy that there haven't been any appeals. There is a bit of "guilty before proven innocent", but it seems that very few, if any, innocent people are getting caught out.

I have always thought it would be very hard to prove actual cheating, even if another athlete sees someone cut the course, the referees can't just take their word for it, just like giving penalties for drafting on another athletes word. I am not even sure you could take a volunteers word for it. I have always thought that the cheater would have to get caught by an 'official', or admit to cheating.

.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [SasquatchRuns] [ In reply to ]
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SasquatchRuns wrote:
If the rules around having a chip are not enforced, then the timing mat placement means very little.

I agree that WTC does a great job with the mat placement, but any situation where an athlete is able to contest their way to a position with no timing data to support it needs to stop. The policy should be black and white when it comes to this. In almost any race, you can pick up a back up chip in transition if you lost it on the bike or swim. The notion that you lose it while running is pretty far fetched. Although possible, I would say it is incumbent on the participant to be aware enough to keep the chip in their possession for at minimum the run course and through the finish.

This is the solution. If you really did happen to lose your chip, then your garmin/gps data is the only thing that can keep you from getting DQ'd.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [sylvan] [ In reply to ]
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Sylvan - on chip reliability, not trying to re-direct this thread but what is the backup plan for a rolling start race if the chip does not read? How do you verify where a person started the swim at x:xx:xx in that situation? I realize that chips and scanners are very reliable but if a chip fails to register when you cross the mat surrounded by other competitors as you head into the water, there is no way for you (the competitor) to know that the chip did not register. Finding out after you finish the race that there was no start time would be devastating.

On the cheater side, a rolling start must open up a range of opportunities to circumvent the system in the absence of a backup verification system such as video of competitors entering swim with timestamp, etc. Especially for wetsuit swims where the chip (or absence thererof) is concealed underneath neoprene.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Slowman wrote:
to you last 3 gents: Ty, kny, and aahchon. as well as others who feel as you do...

i note that a number of people who live in BC and who participated on this thread early on are not participating now. i don't know why, but it might be that they got the same love note i did from ms. miller's attorney, with the threat of litigation if i didn't excise and keep off the site much or most or the meaningful discussion on this topic. i'm now several thousand dollars into this, so that this thread can continue.

there has been at least 1 thread on this up on site continually since this story first broke. there will continue to be a thread. we are now in the neighborhood of 700 posts on this. this thread remains, notwithstanding the demand that it be gone entirely, or censored with a much heavier hand that i am using. this is an issue that threatens to erode confidence in our sport. this is an important topic. i'm willing to accept a certain degree of expense and peril to allow you all the freedom to discuss something that threatens to unravel the fabric of fair play.

finally, we do have an attachment to decency, fairness and civility on this forum, always have. before i pull any posts on these threads i try always to ask myself whether i would moderate this thread the same if there were no lawyers looking over all our shoulders right now. i hope the answer is in each case yes. just, i'm fain to allow a line of reasoning that, when followed to its terminus, may implicate an additional person, notwithstanding the fact that you are certain there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll.

i doubt you 3 are interested in splitting the legal bill 4 ways. i therefore ask that you filter your criticism of my moderation through the prism of the new check i write every day so that we can continue to discuss an important issue.

I was "sort of active" in the initial stages of the first thread I am from BC (about 3 hours from Whistler) and not anonymous. I took special interest in that thread because my SO was first in that AG the past 2 years but dropped out this year. We have a few other FOP women in that and other AG's. We also know of or maybe know the 4th woman enough to say hi at races and enough to look at her results as well as JM before the race just to see how things are "stacking up" before hand.

For me the thread was over when the evidence was clear and appropriate action was taken, after a while when it moved to the "phsycology of cheating" etc, I moved on….I thought that line of debate was not for me. Who cares really? Basically take 30 cheaters at 30 different races and you will have likely 30 different individual motivations for cheating…for me (just my opinion) the "why" of this is more LR stuff.

Having said that the big question for me now is what sanctions will apply? It appears that businesses have gotten out in front of this and taken immediate action…or appropriate action once things were eventually clear (WTC, Sportstats, her coach) but the federations (Trican and TriBC) are likely wringing their hands and having meetings etc about what to do with this athlete?

I haven't been contacted by any legal types regarding this.

Maurice
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [mauricemaher] [ In reply to ]
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Living in the area (Metro Vancouver) and knowing people in that age group, I am watching this to see what action is taken by Trican and TriBC. It is in my view that someone needs to step up and address this issue. I hope in the near future that we see both Trican and TriBC publicly addressing this issue. As others have mentioned, why the person cheated IMO is not significant but how we can move forward and reduce these types of issues is what I want to know.
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [jet black] [ In reply to ]
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jet black wrote:
This is the solution. .

I propose a different solution, and since WTC/USAT/sylvan and other may be reading, maybe something will come of this.

Apparently, the pros now race with the little box that tracks them all day, would it be that hard to tell racers at check in: welcome, if you want to race for a Kona slot, you need to pay an extra $20 to carry around this little box to track you all day. As an added bonus, you get to start in the KQ Mass Start. That way all you guys that are racing for the KQ will know where you stand when you pass one another on course. In addition, your chip strap is a different color than the non wave start people. So there, everyone that is racing to "complete" can have their race and do the rolling start and not sweat if they are getting passed or not, everyone else that is trying to get the KQ will know exactly where they stand when someone with a red chip strap passes them and if any results are ever in question, just go to the fancy little tracking device.

I would pay more for this service and to know that I was in a race and not a quasi time trial where I may get nicked at the line by a guy that was 20 minutes in front or behind me that I literally never saw on race day.

Ironman Certified Coach

Currently accepting limited number of new athletes
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Re: IM Canada F40-44: new thread [themuse1] [ In reply to ]
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themuse1 wrote:
Hi NJSteve,

I believe Sylvan uses MyLaps active chips. This means that there is a battery in the chip that emanates a signal to the RFID reader. This is called active RFID. Most timing companies use passive RFID, which means that the RFID reader looks for chips to come into the electrical field and register. The active system is very near 100% capture of data. I would be surprised if they miss one time stamp in all of the segments of a triathlon. Where the active and passive systems really differentiate is the swim data capture. I believe all passive timing systems have some degree of difficulty making that swim read, due to water on the chip. With active systems, the problem of water on the chip is eliminated, as the battery is emanating a signal.

Passive systems generally read well over 99%, often above 99.8%.

For this and many other reasons, Sportstat is the top timing company in the world.

Thanks!

Mark
You know, I haven't seen evidence of anyone doing this, but RFID cloning isn't completely out of reach, either. Locksmiths clone RFID units in car keys. If you had that sort of thing (multiple identical racing chips), a friend could hit a touchpad for you at the far end of the course and, short of photo evidence, you'd have a "clean" time result.

Just another reason to have multiple means of verification and not rely on a single technology.
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