There is no evidence that he cheated. Only lots of circumstantial evidence that point to it being highly likely he cheated. I would be willing to wager that one more piece of circumstantial evidence out there is an email to the RD asking how many timing mats there would be.

There is no evidence that he cheated. Only lots of circumstantial evidence that point to it being highly likely he cheated.

From page 34 or something...

"StolenBoston wrote:
With this thread at 18 pages, there are a lot of repeats and people claiming that one aspect or another is "damning," or not. A lot of unfortunate (repeated) confusion on possible charity-entry, someone with the same name, etc. We need to stick with the FACTS. I still think it's circumstantial -- but a lot of circumstantial. The performance AND personality have to be considered together.

To summarize:

1. No correlating performances before or after, or tuneup races
2. No pictures on course
3. Head down in picture, with little celebration
4. No visible sweat in finish line photo (especially considered in combination with #1, with someone running the hardest race of their life) [this was later refuted]
5. Owns, uses, wears GPS watch -- but not for BQ race
6. Very brief mention of BQ on Twitter, saying "Thanks" when congratulated by someone else -- DESPITE active running boasts elsewhere -- instead of a picture of a medal, finishing time, watch, or other evidence that somebody likely proud and aware of an achievement that is also an active social media user would likely post
7. (Along with 6): Only brief mention of BQ effort, no pictures or run reports or details offered, yet goes to great lengths to make tshirts and a video for running Boston
8. Called Philly Marathon result 2 months later a 'great day' on Twitter -- with more talk about it than the superior Lehigh time -- despite running a half hour slower
9. Had short paragraph defense of BQ, yet offered no proof, nor exhibited righteous indignation, that someone having a legitimate performance questioned would show.
10. Along with 9, "This is all I have to say on this issue," shut down all social media. Especially unusual given the circumstances of the original story, in which he exhibited strong characteristics of defiance and attention-seeking"

Someone also calculated the chances of the 50 runners before and after his finish (100 total) being photographed between 3-7 times (all of them), and MR being photographed zero times (apart from the finish) as being about 1 in 11,000. That's some pretty strong circumstantial evidence.

The thing that I don't get (either way) after reading through 25+ pages last night is that there is a photo of him with his medal wearing a GPS watch.

• If you go to a marathon planning to cheat, why are you wearing a GPS watch?
• If you did it legitimately, couldn't you produce the GPS file? (Barring watch issues, of course - but he never said he had watch issues in his statement)

Meh...other than numbers 1 & 2, I'd say all the other points above are supposition and conjecture, not evidence. (and #4 was proven to be wrong, FWIW). His time in the Philly Half, however, certainly raises questions the validity of his BQ time.

In short, the dbag used social media and media contacts to shame and embarass a school principal when his kids were hit with an unexcused absence for his Boston Marathon. His response letter went viral and he was hailed as a osrt of grassroots hero. Lo & behold, his BQ time of 3:11 was not even within sniffing distance of his previous race times (he basically held his 5K PR pace for 26.2 miles) and he is not in any on-course race photos until his finishing pic. There are no intermediate timing mats on this course, so no way to know if he ran the course or not.....all evidence certainly points to "No fookin' way", however.

Hello everyone. It seems like a lot of people have jumped on here that haven't read the whole thread.

Let me summarize the evidence we have that he didn't run his BQ.

1) A guy who has a 5k pb of 21:52, a half-marathon pb of 1:40:44 supposedly ran a 3:11 marathon. That simply doens't happen.

His half marathon time averages out to 7:41 per mile. His marathon time - twice the distance comes out to be 7:18.8 per mile. Thus hes' 22.2 seconds per mile too slow for just the half. So if he was running it on a track, he'd be more than 5 seconds per lap to slow. Could he run twice as far more than 20 seconds per mile faster? No, Not possible.

Or let's take his 5k time. That comes out to 7:02.3 per mile. People can't run more than 8 times as far just slowing down 16.5 seconds per mile. The world record for the 5k is 12:37.35. That comes out to 4:03.8 per mil

If the world record holder for the 5k could run a marathon slowing down only 16.5 seconds per mile, the world record would roughly be 1:53.45/.

The world record for the marathon is 2:02:57. That comes out to 4:41.36 per mile. So a pro slows down almost 40 seconds per mile when you look at their 5k to marathon differential.

Maybe that doesn't do it for casual observers - non runneres. So please take a look at theresearchwe've done.

We've looked the 20 finishers closest to him at Lehgh Valley (10 that finsihed in front of him, 10 behind him) - all of them have run WAY faster than him. The slowest person within 20 spots of hin ckills him at lower distances. The person who finsihed 10 spots behind him has run a 5k in 20:12 and half in 1:32.16. That runner's 5k time is 32 seconds per mile faster than Mr. Rossi's. That guy's half marathon time is 38.8 seconds per mile faster than Mr. Rossi's, yet Mr. Rossi beat him the marathon? NO.

Non-hard core runners may not understand how much of a difference thirty-some odd seconds per mile is. IT'S A TON. IT'S BASICALLY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN PROFESSIONAL MAN AND PROFESSIONAL WOMAN IN RUNNING. SO UNLESS YOU THINK A WOMAN IS GOING TO WIN THE OLYMPIC MEN'S GOLD MEDAL IN RUNNING ANYTIME SOON, THEN YOU SHOUDLN'T BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE WITH MR. ROSSI'S PRS RAN THAT MARATHON

The other runner's PRs are listed here:https://goo.gl/i4y8ck

So 1) We've established his other running results AREN'T EVEN IN THE RIGHT BALL PARK . But you want people to believe he had the MOST AMAZING day in the history of running, yet

2) His results came in a race which conveniently doesn't have intermediate chip timing. Most big marathons nowadays have it. This race did not. How convenient. So cutting the course is very doable.

But let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He's from PA and Lehigh is in PA so maybe he chose the race for it's proximity to him. Well I'm sure there are ltos of photos of him on the course right? Wrong.

3) Instead of chips, one would normally rely on race photographs to prove he was out on the course. There are ZERO race photographs of him on the course except at the finish. How convenient.

We've done A LOT OF RESEARCH ABOUT THIS. This spreadsheet -https://goo.gl/i4y8ck- reveals that the 50 finishers before him and after him were all photographed at least 3 times on the course (two other times not counting the finish). He is nowhere to be seen.

4) The guy loves to brag about his times/performances - yet he was very quite about bragging about his supposed qualifier and didn't upload his GPS.

5) He ran over 3:40 and 4:00 in two recent marathons. THe 3:43 came just two months after his supposed 3:11. In two months, he lost more than a minute per mile yet was happy with theperformancepost-race?

So there is ZERO reason for me to believe he ran the time he claims to run.

Goodnight. I may try a formal article tomorrow but it will take time as I'll need to contact race directors, hopefully other finishers and Mr. Rossi himself.

-Rojo

PS. I may try to get a stats guy at 538 to figure the odds out but I bet it's wya over one in a million being legitimate.

Read more:http://www.letsrun.com/...485554#ixzz3ZNjCYHb6

Wow caught in a lie and a big one. I actually feel bad for the guy. If he did cheat (looks likely) then he's a d-bag but he's gonna really be dragged through the mud on this. I would not want to be in his shoes!

Basically he just about has to "retire" from running since each and every 22 minute 5 k he runs is proof that he's
nowhere near a 3:11 marathon runner. He needs to focus on crossfit.

It is stunning to me that BAA would use a marathon that does not have intermediate timing mats as an approved qualifier for Boston.

This is how important GPS watches are, you use them even when you are not running race.

A guy once posted a file on here to document how fast he road up some climb after training with power cranks. It didn't end well... (I believe it culminated with the guy admitting the file was altered, but that ninjas broke into his house and did the deed). Just like this guy, there was legal action threatened (still waiting to be served, all these years later).

This is such an awesome story of humanity!

It would be stunning to me if they did. It's Boston, not the Olympic Trials.

Mostly I suspect that the BAA is simply of the mind that the added headache of having to verify the procedures and practices of a thousand marathons out there is simply not worth the potential "cost" of an unqualified cheater getting in now and then.

Fair point....it is pretty difficult and time consuming to have "You must have timed checkpoints for your race to be considered as a BQ race." in the application process.

C'mon....seriously?

This is a perfect example of where someone's ego becomes obsessed with social media, and ultimately becomes victim of the Interweb's obsession with witch hunts...:) Ironically, I've used my Garmin files to correct race results. It's kind of hard to fake the date, speed, power, route, etc. on an actual headunit. However, I'm sure someone could figure out how to do it. Don't forget....http://www.digitalepo.com/

Somebody has a tremendous amount of time on their hands. They even went through the lost and found pictures.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o6QNphLQ7ZV_sPSCyaFV4Tm1rmOlol_AO5cxF3Lam-Q/edit#gid=0

Fair point....it is pretty difficult and time consuming to have "You must have timed checkpoints for your race to be considered as a BQ race." in the application process.

C'mon....seriously?