blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

Yep, then the person can protest, and more analysis could be done. But, that is not what happens today.

You'd have tons of people getting DQ'd with that methodology, and probably more complaints than a RD would be able to handle. How often does the tracker at Ironman not register splits for people? All the time. I have missing splits for a few races I've done, and I would be F'ing pissed if I got DQ'd even though I completed the whole course.

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

You can submit your complaint in writing and when course photography comes back you can try to make your case.

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

I think the ultimate anti cheating device is one that we all already have, a gps watch. Missing splits happen all the time but if ever confronted, I'd simply show my garmin. If the race director wanted even more proof, I'd let them have the file.

If would be cool one day if all of the timing chips had a gps with transmission capabilities. It would solve the timing mat issues and prevent/reduce a lot of cheating. It would also enable better tracking of missing/ lost athletes and provide for more real time updates for friends and families.

Just a thought... Someday.

Who in this thread even remotely suggest that they want cheaters to get away with cheating? All I see are people simply pointing out the fact that the timing mats/chips are not infallible. Ever heard of William Blackstone? Or better yet, Abraham?

Boy, did you set the hook deep on this one. Well played, sir.

Those timing mats mess up all the time though, don't they?



Ya, and it's too bad because it allows the cheaters an easy path to keep cheating. I think part of the problem is it is old technology used in the timing, they need to upgrade to the latest, one that has video too. When i watch ITU racing, they seem to have it down, and that is with 30 or 40 guys going across the mats in just a few seconds. There are a lot more cheaters out there than you can imagine too. Besides many who are cheating their way onto podiums, when you get into the MOP and BOP there are a lot of lap skippers, taxi rides, and conveinent turnarounds happening..Until it gets fixed, they just blend in with all the others whose chips don't register on the mats..

John Adams: "It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,"

Benjamin Franklin: it is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer

William Blackstone: better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer

OK, so this isn't our criminal justice system, but why punish thousands of innocent athletes with a DQ on the possibility that you DQ a handful of cheaters?

video is the way to go.

My wife's cousin ran the Paris marathon. We watched him on video at least 5 times during his run.( sort of run...he spent a lot of time walkng and drinking)...therei s no reason that video/streaming couldn't be put at easch timing mat. Make it impossible to cheat and entertaining for friends family to watch thier athlete several times during the race. On the Paris marathon website you can purchase copies of your video ...so it could be revenue nutral as well.

What the heck is it with dentists? I come from a slalom ski background and there was a notorious ass hole dentist in Wisconsin named Jim Michaels who rigged his home course with an elaborate underwater pulley system. What he did was hit a remote switch when it was his run and the buoys would come in a foot on each side of the course. The guy is insane. He was claiming running 41 off @ 36 mph at 48 years old??? Yea right. He has since been banned from USA Water Skiing events. Andy Mapple(the Dave Scott of slalom feats) stone cold stood up and saw the buoys moving in and finally said enough is enough. I remember thinking all the time it was just too good to be true....it was.

My favorite ploy of his was to make up a website for a fictious marathon, They list himself as the AG winner for it. He even made up completely fictious results results for the whole thing. This happened, I believe at least three times.

Those timing mats mess up all the time though, don't they?

Not missing your point at all. I just think you are first underestimating the number of times a mat misses a split, and then overstating the percentage of those who have missing splits who are actually cheaters. Many local races don't have the best timing equipment and missed splits are common. What you want to causes a whole lot of people to have to work with an RD just to keep their finish time in an effort to catch a very small number of actual cheaters. That's where we differ.

You can submit your complaint in writing and when course photography comes back you can try to make your case.

I think everyone should consult ST before they do anything.

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

But a DQ based on missing split times wouldn't have worked in Kip's case, most times. Almost every race he has a disputed finish result for he HIT all the mats. That's the craziness of his situation. It's sort of like the "I passed all my drug tests, therefore I don't dope". The existence of part A of that statement does not prove part B. Even at Boston, Kip hit all the split mats. He did the same thing at the race I work for. We have mats at the start, mile 10, 13.1, 20, and the finish. Our course is a long narrow course, basically start/finish is in the middle, and you go south, north, south, north, south with the south part of the course 3 miles from the S/F and the north end 5 miles from the S/F. Our mats at 13.1 and 20 are near the furthest points away from the S/F on the course and are ~6 miles apart on roads that are very difficult to drive during the race (major traffic jams). He hit all our mats in reasonable splits. With 20+ years working the technical side of this race I'm suspicious but I have no idea how he cut the course if he did so.

And that's what you find in almost all the suspicious races with this guy, he covered his bases on getting to the mats.

Since he was at our event we have added unannounced mats at random locations. It adds a few thousand $ to the timing service which of course all entrants pay for.

As for a blanket DQ for racers missing splits, not going to happen. Too many variables in the system to quarantee 100% reliability, although the basic systems have gotten a lot better the last 3 years (plus racers are more used to how to make them work best). We use the B-Tag. Out of about 4000 finishers at our race, both marathoners and relay teams, we had 6 "no reads" at the finish this year, down from over 50 in 2010. We did find all 6 of those no reads on the backup video of the finish. As for missed splits on the course the numbers were a lot higher but those boxes are set up on the fly after the start so we don't expect them to be as reliable.

Well, for starters - he hit all the mats on the race where he ended up wearing a completely different set of clothes.

It's not incredibly difficult to do.

You start dead last (so anyone that you pass isn't ultra competitive enough to care, and the spectators don't care if you just walk off the course). You hit the first mat while pumping it as hard as you can (in his case a 6:30 pace or so) then hop off the course for a breather and a taxi to an area near the next mat. Rinse and repeat. When you get to the last timed mat - it's on you to book it the rest of the way - which he typically does (and usually ends up casually jogging or walking across the finish line in his 2:55 marathon).

Blanket DQs won't work because there is too many malfunctions and technical errors that happen with timing mats. And it happens ALL THE TIME. In fact, I can't think of a single marathon I've done with them where there wasn't some kind of split missing. If you take the "missing a split? You're out!" approach - you're going to have WAY too many appeals to sort through and it'll ruin your race. Maybe if there is more evidence (several splits missing, times that don't make sense - i.e. a 7:00 pace turns into a 4:55 pace or something, etc) then you can do the "DQed until you show me otherwise) approach.

...So, if he hit all the mats, and the times were reasonable, and you have no idea how he could cut the course, what was the issue with his race? (I am missing the rest of the story, but am sure more interested since I have done timing in the past.)...

Those timing mats mess up all the time though, don't they?

His issue with our race was that when I started looking into his result, based on the oddness that is someone who took 4:30+ to cross the start line then supposedly passed almost 4500 marathoners and relay teams (nearly the last person to cross the start line) on a course that is mostly 1 lane roads or 10' wide bikepaths, the fact that I couldn't find him in ANY pictures taken by our official photographer except the finish line - that is an issue worth looking into. In about 10 years of being the guy who gets to check our results post-race, this is the first time I've seen a runner with that kind of discrepancy finish sub 4:00, and he was sub 3:00.

When I started looking through the pictures I knew approximately when he should have shown up in photo order, at mile 9 for example. He did not show up in any pictures in the 5 minutes +/- of the time he should have passed that photographer. Unfortunately our photographers missed some other runners too, albeit none before him. Some races where he has been DQ'd they had pictures of ALL the runners at certain points, and he was missing. The lack of pictures was the big issue for me. Doesn't mean the timing systems failed in any way, just means the likelihood that he beat the system at our race exists.

Oh, one other thing that had me scratching my head...our race is 1000+ miles from where Kip lives. I could see a local determined to cut our course plotting out how to do it by looking around the city. But for someone who doesn't live here that would be a much more difficult proposition.

I think everyone should consult ST before they do anything.

I don't know how he really does it, but the easiest way that I can think of, is that he takes off on bike, masquerading as a spectator, and then rides until he sees a mat. He then locks his bike, and then pretends he's spectating. He does not walk onto the course, but passes close enough to the mat that it's registered. (He was actually caught on camera off -course adjacent to the mat as per the NYer article.) He then repeats this throughout the race.

Why someone would fly across the country to do this repeatedly is beyond normal sane behavior.

I think everyone should consult ST before they do anything.

I just got this week's New Yorker. There's an article about Kip Litton, our favorite marathon serial cheater.
http://www.newyorker.com/...120806fa_fact_singer

I haven't had time to read it yet and that link only gets non-subscribers the first few pages. Sorry I don't have more, but I thought it was funny.

For those who aren't aware yet:
-here's a summary
-A 225 page thread on letsrun.com

Perhaps Kip is a "serial cheater" in another way. He tells his wife he is out training all the time because he is really good, but is really having an affair. Then he cheats in a few races to convince her he is that good. Might explain the 1,000 mile trip to cheat on a race (with his mistress). Just another theory...

I just got this week's New Yorker. There's an article about Kip Litton, our favorite marathon serial cheater.
http://www.newyorker.com/...120806fa_fact_singer

I haven't had time to read it yet and that link only gets non-subscribers the first few pages. Sorry I don't have more, but I thought it was funny.

For those who aren't aware yet:
-here's a summary
-A 225 page thread on letsrun.com

Got a copy of New Yorker from the library and read that, then went "Total Immersion" [so to speak] into the LetsRun thread [which is now up to 232 pages]

I'm still dizzy from that voyage.

Except course photography isn't fool-proof either. I'm quite 'invisible' to the photogs in a lot of my races, and I don't cut courses.

]You can submit your complaint in writing and when course photography comes back you can try to make your case.

blanket DQ for anyone with a missing split time, zero tolerance

Kip........Kip Litton, Is that you???????

I see now that ST does not have the least modern forum design on the internet. That title is held by letsrun.com.

256 pages??!! That's a lot of yapping.

This was my first introduction to Kippie and he seems like a real piece of work. I'm planning on jumping into the LetsRun thread this weekend while pedaling away on the trainer. Its actually a quite interesting read.

After reading the long article in New Yorker, I really would like how he cheated in Boston Marathon.
The dude got the cheating system down good. Maybe he could write a book about it.

If dentistry doesn't work out or he needs something to fill in the extra time he doesn't spend training for marathons, he could start up a consulting business to review course layouts in order to find the "Not so obvious" areas for a cheater to gain an edge. He would definitely be the best in the business.