MTN Marathon: Rogue competitors to be kicked out
Nov 26, 2014
The Uganda Athletics Federation will put more emphasis on locking out cheats from the MTN Kampala Marathon after discovering that some runners, mostly in the 10km and corporate race events, cheated on Sunday.
By Norman Katende
The Uganda Athletics Federation will put more emphasis on locking out cheats from the MTN Kampala Marathon after discovering that some runners, mostly in the 10km and corporate race events, cheated on Sunday.
There were incidents, in the annual race which attracted over 15,000 runners, where some of the top women in the 10km race were not seen at the finishing line but the computer recorded their times! The organisers were in for another mind boggling scenario in the corporate race where two teams registered “abnormal” results.
“We know these athletes and they were neither seen on the route nor at the finishing but they had times in the computer. We highly believe that they gave their timing chips to some fast people who ran with them in their pockets for them to register better times. We believe in fair play and this has to be dealt with,” said Faustino Kiwa, the technical director of the marathon.
The same bizarre situation happened to corporate teams which select the fastest runners and give them all the five chips so that their teams get the best average time.
In two of the incidents, all the runners of one corporate team arrived at the finishing line with less than 0.02 seconds differentiating their individual run time, which is practically impossible.
“Some runners had on a couple of T-shirts to conceal several chips they carried while others hid them in their kit bags. There are so many ways of cheating but people should know that running in such events should be fun and a motivation to perform better in the future,” added Kiwa.
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