A Chinese Runner Barely Edged Out 3 Africans at the Beijing Half Marathon, and for Some Reason People Think the Race Was Fixed

Xinhua. Shutterstock Images.

Today is Patriots Day in Massachusetts. Which means three things. State workers get a well-deserved and much needed day off to go along with their other holidays, vacations, sick days, personal days and comp time. It's also the anniversary of the peak moment in Masshole culture:

Seriously, if the Hallmark Channel ever chose to do a RomCom about this holiday, they'd call it "Here Comes the Pizza" and it would be about two total opposites finding true love after one hits the other in the neck with a slice.

Finally, it means the Boston Marathon. That one time of the year where your average Masshole thinks about distance running, other than when we get pressured into doing a charity 5K or some dick refused to hug the curb on his morning jog and you have to go across the double yellows to avoid getting charged with vehicular homicide. 

It's a time when the world comes to the city of my birth to celebrate the spirit of human achievement, international cooperation, and athletic competition. So it's only fitting that another world capital just held it's own, smaller version. But one that has been ruined by the suggestion that somehow, the results were somehow less than legitimate:

Source - An investigation has been launched into the Beijing half-marathon after the leaders appeared to slow down to allow Chinese athlete He Jie to win the race.

Footage from Sunday's event showed Kenyan runner Willy Mnangat looking toward Jie and pointing to the finish line before the Asian Games marathon gold medallist moved ahead of himself, fellow Kenyan Robert Keter and Ethiopia’s Dejene Hailu Bikila. 

The African trio had opened up a gap of a few hundred metres on Jie and they made no effort to retake the lead once their opponent had passed. 

Mnangat later admitted to the South China Morning Post that he let Jie win the race 'because he is my friend'.  …

The Beijing Sports Bureau, the body in charge of sports, said an investigation was under way and the findings would be published later. 

Jie, 25, a member of China's marathon team, is also the national marathon record holder. He won in a time of 1:03:44, ahead of Mnangat, Keter and Bikila all tied for second place.  

Let's get one thing straight: I might not follow the sport of jogging long distances or have ever heard the names of these four men. But I'm not going to sit here and let all the cynics and pessimists ruin this beautiful moment of triumph. Watch this clip and tell me this finish wasn't on the level:

I mean, just look at He Jie's finishing kick. That sudden burst of energy he shows at the end. He blew past these world class marathoners like they were walking. You can see in their eyes they're just all out of gas and are in awe that somehow, someway, against all odds, He Jie still had gas in his tank. It was truly a great moment of superhuman endurance. And I refuse to allow it to be spoiled by suggestions there's a scandal involved. 

But just to play devil's advocate here, I can see where some might believe this was not on the up-and-up. The fact that Willy Mnangat sort of let the cat out of the bag with that "my friend" comment. When after all, he's running alongside a fellow Kenyan and another runner from the same part of the world, but somehow professes deep emotional ties to a guy who lives half a world away. And it doesn't help that athletes from Kenya and Ethiopia dominate distance running more than anyone from any country dominates any sport on Earth. So this is the equivalent of the 1992 USA Dream Team losing Team Micronesia. Maybe it would be slightly more believable if Jie beat an Irishman, a Icelander and an Alaskan. And admittedly, that 3-way tie for 2nd place feels a tiny bit sus.

Which only goes to show that most of the time, trying to fix a sporting event - and doing it convincingly - is harder than actually winning one. There's an art to taking a dive. And when you don't do it right, it ends up looking obvious. Like when Jake LaMotta had to:

All that said, I'm not buying it. I have too much faith in the integrity of sports in the People's Republic of China. And I have all the confidence in the world that The Beijing Sports Bureau will look into this matter and find out that there's no fix at all. That this is yet another triumph for the Chinese Communist Party and the glorious revolution. All hail He Jie, the best there ever was in the half marathon game.