258 People Caught Cheating in Chinese Marathon

(The Guardian) Organizers of the Shenzhen half-marathon have said the 258 participants caught cheating during Sunday’s race will not be able to run away from punishment for their actions.

As many as 18 runners were found to wearing fake bibs, and three were running on behalf of others. They face lifetime bans from the event, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.

The 237 others, most of whom had taken shortcuts during the race and were caught out by traffic cameras and local photographers, could be banned for two years

In the most blatant case, a traffic camera caught runners turning round at least 1km before they were supposed to make a U-turn, potentially shaving about 10% off the 21km race.

When someone tells me they ran the marathon I say “wow that’s awesome, must’ve been tough”. I don’t ask them what place they came in. I don’t ask them what their time is. Quite frankly, if you didn’t come in the top 10 or break some sort of record, no-one cares about those details. So why on earth is everybody and their god damn mother cheating in Chinese marathons! I can assure you that not a single soul will give a single fuck that you came in 1,000th place as opposed to 2,000th place.  If you’re going to cheat, take a page of Rosie Ruiz’s book and cheat to win. Also, if you’re going to cheat, maybe don’t do it in China, which just so happens to be biggest surveillance state on earth.  If they have facial recognition technology that can identify anyone who jaywalks

I’m pretty sure they have cameras that can detect people running through bushes.

Footage shows runners crossing through bushes and trees that separated two parts of the course.