Running a marathon is often listed as one of the bucket list among many of my friends. Marathon is always associated as a revered sport, associated with strength, determination and perseverance. If you are a guy and you told people that you have completed a marathon, your social status immediately rockets and beautiful girls will flock to you and want you to share your experience. If you are a girl and you told people that you have completed a marathon, men will queue up to want to marry you.
The recent
blog article by runningsucks.blogspot.sg created an uproar in various Singapore's social media circles, and the topic of cheating in a running event became a hot topic among the runners. The saga started by a passionate runner/blogger who was taking pictures of Singapore Marathon and noticed quite a number of runners wearing the slow runner's bib clearing the marathon within 4 hours (An extremely good timing by marathon standards). He checked the bib number against the official timing and found that some of the runners skipped some of the check-points, effectively reducing a 42km marathon to 25km. The blogger posted pictures and names of some of the suspected cheaters.
The Singapore Marathon organizers later clarified that some of the slower runners were asked to turn back at the 13km mark as they have to reopen the roads closed by the event. The runners who were asked to turn back were still promised the coveted race medal and finisher T-shirt.
The big question now is that Singapore Marathon, being one of the
Gold Label road race awarded by
International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), along with the most prestigious marathons in the world such as the Boston Marathon, is setting the right standard by forcing runners to take a shorter route and still awarding them the finisher rewards despite not completing the marathon. Is that the standard the organizers should set for a Gold Label marathon event? Should a qualifying timing be set just like the Boston marathon?
While the debate rages on in the running community, I took some time to take a look at some of the marathon cheating cases around the world and the motivation behind and possible solutions to deter marathon cheatings.
"I only want the T-shirt and Medal!"
(2013 Singapore Marathon, Singapore)
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| Picture from Straits Times |
Mr Tam Chua Puh created an
uproar at the Singapore Stanchart Marathon when he emerged as the winner of the local category of Stanchart Marathon. He ran 6km, took some time to drink some coffee (I made that up, but what else to do while waiting for the race to end on an early Sunday morning?), and made a heroic dash to the end point. The tightly knit competitive Singapore marathon community was confused
as to who this new-comer was and how he managed to beat the top marathon athletes in
Singapore. The organizers took a few hours to verify the records before
they disqualified Mr Tam. Mr Tam later made an apology and said:
