turd ferguson wrote:Jwolf wrote:turd ferguson wrote:I don't care. It doesn't affect me personally and not a single person in the world was affected by this.
Except the person whose spot she took in Boston.
This happened prior to the new rules.
All I can say is that I am now truly grateful that I qualified when I did. If you ran a race before the registration opened and that would have been in July, the second your crossed the line and saw your time on the big clock, you knew we were going to run Boston if you were ready to register in September. I had air line tickets and a hotel booked by August. But now ... where is the cut off?
And there was the odd case of cheating back then but it was not a huge deal. A handful of cheaters compared to the close to 20,000 who were there legitimately was irrelevant and almost a non story. But the fall out of such "audits" or as I prefer to call them, self appointed on line vigilantes who have no accountability full of self righteous indignation, in order to call out 10 runners who are alleged to have cut the course short, they are putting a black cloud, the air of suspicion over thousands of runners who followed the rules. Here is a time when all of the hard work the blood sweat and tears is rewarded and so why not relax and enjoy the race and everything connected to it. Where there should only be the glow of accomplishment and achievement and yet as shown here by two people, the thought is that they are on the red flag list and thought go to hoping that their other results prove their innocence. When I crossed the line, I was smiling ear to ear. I had a great experience, I got my medal and could proudly wear my jacket. Now, I would have had the same thoughts that my finish time was 21 minutes slower then my qualifying time so I will be subject to further review. All of this for 10 people that are alleged to have cut the race short.
If you have a person who used someone else to qualify and there is very clear photographic evidence that would be accepted in a court of law - different gender, 20 year old and the "qualifier" is 50, etc I get why someone should go after them. But as per above, to throw doubt over thousands to maybe catch 10 is not worth the price in my opinion. I suspect the BAA would like the vigilantes to quietly go away because this is a story that indirectly taints the Boston Marathon. They proudly announce they caught 47 and may be able to catch many more cannot good for the image of the Boston Marathon.
End of Rant.