Nike Women's Marathon Controversy..

[dclsnailpace]

Did you guys catch this in the news? Evidently the elite pack went off 20 minutes before field, and a woman in the field ran the race of her life and posted the best time by 11 minutes. Nike decided she couldn't win since she wasn't in the lead field to begin with. Their "official line" was that the elite runners had no idea she was cruising along that fast and therefore couldn't respond to it. She ran the only sub-3 hour time, so maybe the elites weren't so much.

Public outcry ensued- pitchforks and torches, etc. Now Nike has announced two winners. She's happier, but clearly sounds like an asterik situation.

My personal opinion? She ran the fastest- she won. I realize everyone runs faster when pushed- but who was pushing her?? Toe the line, go hard, and let the chips fall where they may. But then again, I'll never win a race anyway, and my only chance of winning my age group is if I outlive everyone and toddle in!!

What do you "elite" guys think?? Here's the link;
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/23/MNCI13MDH0.DTL

[frojoe23]

She ran the fastest time, so she won the race. That seems pretty simple, right? Not quite, under most race rules (USATF rules), the race is won based solely on gun time, not your chip time. Essentially, chip time is a split. She had the fastest split for the course, but not the fastest gun time.

Of course, remember that there were two different races. I don't really agree with the marathon creating two distinct races for the elites and the other competitors. Ths woman ran a faster gun time in the second race than those elites in the first, but even as two seperate races the official gun started with the first race.

This is the same way that qualifying for the Olympic Trials works. It is based solely on gun time, not chip time. If I cross the start line a minute behind everybody else, then I have to run 2:18 instead of 2:19 to make the Trials.

But in my personal opinion, if there would have only been one race, then this woman ran the fastest time and she is the winner.

[dclsnailpace]

I like your analogy to gun vs. chip time. I got the impression it was a seperate gun, but as you state, unless she overtook the lead group and passed them, she was screwed I guess. Seems like 20 minutes is a little excessive in any case, and now that they're considering doing away with the wave start, I think it'll be a non-issue in the future.

If there were seperate guns, and therefore seperate races, then two winners makes more sense. As much as anything does.

Maybe they should have cut the baby (err... I mean the trophy!) in half!