Spintela's thread about a pacer in IM made me wonder -- have any of you experienced blatant cheating during a race (not counting drafting in nonlegal races)
A couple years ago in a major race I've participated in for years, the winner in my age group beat everyone else by about 45 mins. I recognized her name as someone who was a middle-of-the-packer along with me the year before (it's a small wave, and the usual suspects quickly become familiar). Being a total snoop I wanted to see what she looked like to effect such a miraculous improvement, so went into the race photos to pull up her name. There was no way in *hell* this woman was my age, she looked more like 25-30 and on the elite side at that. So I continued snooping and looked up the same name from the year before. Lo and behold, a totally different, middle-aged-looking lady appeared.
Unless there was a big mixup at the finish, or two totally different runners of the same name in the same age group, what I suppose happened is the slower lady got injured or didn't feel like racing and gave her number to a very fast friend/clubmate/whatever who did, in her place.
None of this affected my lowly spot in the standings but it did piss me off on behalf of the 2nd and 3rd placer who got bumped down unfairly. I got in touch with the organisers but they didn't take my CIS Triathlon detective work anywhere.
Anyone else have stories ?
A couple years ago in a major race I've participated in for years, the winner in my age group beat everyone else by about 45 mins. I recognized her name as someone who was a middle-of-the-packer along with me the year before (it's a small wave, and the usual suspects quickly become familiar). Being a total snoop I wanted to see what she looked like to effect such a miraculous improvement, so went into the race photos to pull up her name. There was no way in *hell* this woman was my age, she looked more like 25-30 and on the elite side at that. So I continued snooping and looked up the same name from the year before. Lo and behold, a totally different, middle-aged-looking lady appeared.
Unless there was a big mixup at the finish, or two totally different runners of the same name in the same age group, what I suppose happened is the slower lady got injured or didn't feel like racing and gave her number to a very fast friend/clubmate/whatever who did, in her place.
None of this affected my lowly spot in the standings but it did piss me off on behalf of the 2nd and 3rd placer who got bumped down unfairly. I got in touch with the organisers but they didn't take my CIS Triathlon detective work anywhere.
Anyone else have stories ?