Marshall Univ Marathon

The following is all a direct paste from the RWOL thread, posted by mr.bo:

"WHOA. I've been reading the whole thread on letsrun, and this is some story. But I didn't get personally touched by this. Until a bell went off last night, and I confirmed it this morning.

In November I ran the Marshall U Marathon at Huntington. Very nice race, but there were some issues with the results. They initially had the wrong top women in the half, and I noticed a couple odd things with top-20 marathoners. So I investigated a little, helped by photos posted at tristateracer.com (pictures taken at the start, about 4-5 miles in, and at the finish). I wrote to the race director, and he was very receptive, and things got fixed within a couple days. My finish was upgraded from 20th to 18th, and I was happy the mistakes were fixed.

This morning I looked at my note to the race director. I'll just quote myself here from the e-mail of 11/11/10, emphasis added:

"I looked at all the photos in Mile 5 and could not find David Kipling, bib 506. He had no chip time at the Half mark. He does cross the finish line at 2:56:25, but it looks like he didn't run the whole marathon. He might have switched to the half without going through registration, or perhaps he got hurt during the race and decided to move to the half. Nothing on him at Athlinks.com; 49-yr-old sub-3 guys don't just come out of the blue."

I just figured it was an honest mistake. RD corrected it and took Mr. Kipling out of the final results. (He doesn't appear in the half results, either.) No photo at mile 5. I haven't yet looked to see if 506 was at the start, but here he is jogging across the finish line with the 13-1/2 minute per mile half-marathoners: http://digital-sports-images.smugmug.com/Sports/2010-Marshall-Marathon-Finish/14552801_7QiKa#1082401382_tdYVz-A-LB . You can't see real close up, but we do have the black cap, dark glasses, and low-placed bib.

The timer and race director removed David Kipling from the results, so I don't have a hometown, but my note above indicates his age was listed as 49. This race was small and while we had timing chips, there was no chip mat at the start, so everyone just had gun time for results. I don't think there was any chip mat on the course either. Somebody who wanted to cheat could have just put their bib on and run the last half mile. If "Kipling" had run a couple hundred yards at my pace where they were taking pictures by the river near mile 5, he'd have gotten away with it.

I don't post on letsrun, but if anyone here does and wants to pass this story along, it's fine with me."

Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010&page=55#ixzz1BQKLLqCW

"Marathon Guide lists results for the Marshall U Marathon with David Kipling's 2:56 time. Hometown is listed as stuart, FL."

http://www.marathonguide.com/results/browse.cfm?MIDD=2207101107&Gen=M&Begin=1&End=100&Max=353