Nearly 6K Runners Disqualified from Mexico City Marathon for Alleged Cheating

Mexico City Marathon officials disqualified nearly 6,000 runners after an investigation revealed widespread cheating. The investigation resulted in the elimination of 20 percent of the field.

Official results show that 28,206 runners crossed the finish line. Of those, 5,800 have now been disqualified after Facebook posts showing runners allegedly cheating by taking shortcuts, beginning the race along the course, or even allegedly boarding trains, Runners World reported. The website reported that 1,296 of the disqualified runners posted times that would qualify the runner for the Boston Marathon had their results been allowed to stand.

Marathon Investigation reported that most of the cheaters did not do so in order to qualify for Boston in May 2018. Rather, Derek Murphy wrote, they did it for the collectible medals presented to those completing the race. Beginning in 2013, the Mexico City Marathon began issuing a medal for each year bearing a letter to spell out M-E-X-I-C-O. This year’s medal bore the letter “C.”

Murphy’s analysis of the data revealed that the majority of those disqualified “jumped in at various points along the course.” He determined these runners never crossed the starting mat.

He presented video and photographic evidence showing people wearing runner’s bibs along the course as some of the “elite runners” passed by.

“At first I was like, there’s no way; that’s a huge number of people,” Murphy told Runner’s World in a phone interview. “This is the most substantial number that I have ever seen.”

Murphy explained why the cheating matters:

Does it really matter if most of these runners just wanted the medal to help complete their collection? Yes it does.

Beyond the distaste that taking a medal that wasn’t earned, it is still an issue.

You have thousands of runners jumping on the course at various intervals. The majority of runners were attempting to run a legitimate race. They were racing for personal records, or perhaps a Boston qualifying time. It is to the detriment to these runners putting forth a legitimate effort that they potentially have to deal with slower runners jumping on the course ahead of them.

He then posted one runner’s blog post where he appeared to excuse or minimize his “cheating:”

Cheating is a strong word. I can’t talk for everybody but myself.

After running the 2016 edition of this marathon I wanted to repeat the experience and I paid for the entry fee last year to run the 2017 edition. Later on the year, I decided that I wanted to do an international marathon so I applied for the Chicago marathon and I got a place through the lottery. I am not an experienced runner and I thought that it was too much for me to run two marathons in +30 days, so I decided to focus on the Chicago one. At first, I just wasn’t going to run the Mexico Marathon, but then a friend convinced me to use it as a training, and so I did. I ran 32k that day. I never said I ran the full 2017 Marathon or posted everywhere a picture of myself at the finish line, I just took advantage of a place in an organized race to do a long distance training, but of course, I am among those +5000 disqualified runners (which is fair) because I didn’t cover the entire distance.

Is that cheating?, I let you decide.

Murphy concluded there was no evidence of widespread or systematic errors in the race’s timing equipment.

He said race officials removed most of those disqualified from the list submitted to Boston Marathon officials.