| Race detective |
| ||
Smoking gun! Superb work - thanks. Race directors of large major races should take a look at the likeliest spot(s) where cheaters will cut their course, then ask their timing company to place in extra timing mats. A single missed mat is the easiest way to find a cheater. Or as in this race's case, just set up a simple program to flag unreasonable splits. Then make sure to publicize all caught cheaters in the results. This should cut down on the problem, at least for large races. |
| Gasparilla watcher |
| ||
Nice pickup, GK, on the mat - - an unusual mistake for the good doctor too hit a mat too quickly - - If I were you, i would report this to the Gasp people - I think Susan Harmeling is the name of the race coordinator. Get this guy's bogus finish(es) dq'd. I wager he cut out the entire end loop of the 15K. It ticks me off more because I am a 45-49 guy! I do take some solace in beating the good doctor by almost 40 minutes in the Jacksonville Marathon in 2003. ha. |
| like a mule |
| ||
Kip must have some kick, going out three and a half minutes slower in the first half than anyone in the top 25 of those results, yet finishing 15th. |
| dhdhdhhdh |
| ||
Gary - Genius work, catching that. That might be the biggest smoking gun I've seen so far. Are you familiar enough with that split on the race course? Was it more likely that he cut the course between those two points, or is something like a bicycle, etc. more likely? |
| Avocado's Number |
| ||
Smoking gun! Superb work - thanks. [/quote] Sorry, but I don't think that's correct. If you look through the results, I think you'll discover that the "half time" is "gun time," while the "split 2" time is "chip time." People who started way back have a smaller differential between the two times. In fact, I saw one guy who crossed the starting line ten minutes after the gun and had a "split 2" time that was lower than his "half time." |
| dhdhdhhdh |
| ||
Damn, I think Avocado is right. 89th place, for example, only has a differential of 51 seconds between half and split 2. Bummmer. |
| silly old fossil |
| ||
It has been mentioned on the previous, lengthy Kip Litton thread that the donations to Kip Litton's charity are based on how many people he passes in a race. That explains him starting at the very back of the field. But consider this - how much planning and research goes into him studying a race course? Remember, all of his races are NOT local to him; how much pain-staking research goes into mapping the course? Does Kip Litton know the mat placements prior to the race? A few charity runners have defended cheating as "the ends justifies the means". Perhaps this is the case here. Finally, I could buy his times/racing accomplishments if Kip Litton was a mid-foot striker, but the guy is clearly a heel-striker. Good day. |
| Orange marker turn around cone |
| ||
Sorry, but I think it may be correct and something is still fishy. What were his splits leading up to this point? My point is he may have ran that segment faster because he was fresh from not running the full distance up until that point in the race. Even if he started later than most runners, he would be pretty much passing people the whole way until a certain point. If he did he would be highly noticed. Doesn't add up. |
| d2xccoach |
| ||
Kip and I talked on the phone in early June and he told me he was raising money based on how many runners he passed in his marathons, so I'm probably the one who first posted that info to this board. I'm the Technical Coordinator for Vermont City Marathon. Part of my job after the race is to review the results for "anomalies". Every year I find a few results that don't look legit to me and we pull them out and wait for the runners to contact us to explain things. We find that a lot of times when runners get "caught" they just go away never to be heard from again. Out of probably 30-35 finish times that I've pulled from our results the past decade only 2 people have contacted me and been adament that they ran the full course. Kip's result at our race this year was reviewed by our staff as "suspicious". In the end we decided we did not have enough evidence that he cheated. We may have been strongly suspicious of his result, but we didn't have what we needed to pull him out. What I've seen at other races is stronger evidence. As I posted in the original thread that was pulled, what I don't understand is "how". First off, the start line discrepancy is suspicious. One of my job duties is to time how long it takes for all starters to cross the start line after the gun. On my watch I had 4:18. Above it shows the 5th to last official finisher crossing at 4:21, I can buy that it's close enough. But it shows Kip at 4:34. At 4:10 post-gun the only people behind the start line were coming out of the portos. Why do I know this? We have to pick up the chip mats ASAP because our course returns to the start line at the 3.2 mile mark going in the opposite direction and we need to get that done fast so that the wheelchairs aren't hindered. The wheelchairs are back in about 7 minutes (they get a 3:00 head start) so our window to work is extremely short. Any stragglers that force me to keep the mats down even an extra 10 seconds make my job harder so I notice them. Anyone who crossed the mats 4:34 after the gun would have been well behind everyone else and would have stood out as a lone runner on that Youtube video. And that literally would have been the last second to get a chip activated before we unplug the boxes and load them to move to the finish. The 2nd thing I don't understand is how he would have gotten around our course to hit the mats. We have a mat at mile 10, which is on Pine St about 1 mile south of the start line. We have a mat at mile 13.1, which is in Oakledge Park about 2.75 miles south of the start line via road or 2.25 miles south of the start line via bikepath. And we have a mat at mile 20 on Staniford Rd, which is about 2.75 miles north of the start line via road. You can also get from 13.1 to 20 via the bikepath (~6 miles). But you can't get from 13.1 to 20 via the bikepath on raceday. The bikepath is closed and we have police to enforce "runners only with bibs" on the bikepath. I can see getting to 10 and 13.1 at the appropriate times. You could easily hide your bib and take a bike or get a ride to near those spots. It's getting from 13.1 to 20, even in 47 minutes, that is a problem. With road closures if one were to use a car you couldn't get within 1/3 mile of Oakledge Park and get that car back out again. And then you'd have a major traffic jam halfway to Staniford (bikes would deal with the same traffic jam). His 6:11 splits the last 10k was probably the most suspicious piece of data. But that section has a big downhill at mile 21.5 and then last 4.5 miles is deadflat on the lakeside bikepath. The course profile on MG.com shows some climbs in the last 10k but I run out there all the time and I can tell you there aren't any hills at all. In the end despite everything we didn't have what we needed to DQ him. |
| send his friends a link |
| ||
Go to his facebook page and send his friends a link to this thread. I'm sure they'll find it an eye-opening read. |
| GK |
| ||
Gasparilla - With the half split being a gun time. It does make the splits seem more reasonable. However... I would've still had him by 2mins around mile 22 (split3), and he beat my by about a minute. According to the one picture they got of him finishing he was wearing the long sleeve race shirt. You mean to tell me that a 49yr old dusted me around mile 25 clipping off 6:20's and wearing a long sleeve bright blue shirt? He must outweigh me by 40 lbs! That's something I would notice, and it would haunt me. The last 7 miles of that course is dead into the wind. There is no way that happened. |
| vdawg |
| ||
this kip guy is either a better runner than people are giving him credit for, or a meticulous cheat. crazy stuff man |
| what??? |
| ||
"Tired runner" is right. That Kip guy looks overweight and overdressed, and runs with a shuffle. NO WAY he can run these times. My belief is that ALL his race times are BOGUS.
|
| Heel Striker |
| ||
I am not overweight, but I shuffle and run sub 2:30, so don't be too critical of the shuffle! |
| TrackCoach |
| ||
I don’t know a whole lot about Kip; in fact I’ve learnt most of what I know from reading this thread. I do know quite a bit about road races, pace, courses and automatic timing systems, etc., and what I will tell you is that there is no cheating one method that will work in all of the race he has competed in. One method might work in one race, but want work in another. There are some races where it is ‘almost’ impossible to get off the course and back on without being detected by other runners and/or someone in the crowd. There some races that use over a dozen photographers spread throughout the course, who captures almost every runner that passes by them. Kip would have no way of knowing in advance where those photographers would be positioned. Kip’s start, finish and pace in certain races are certainly strange, but definitely not impossible and I can provide examples of other performances that are even stranger. Strange things in races do happen from time to time, but when performances are consistently strange, that’s even stranger, but is not impossible or cheating. Several years ago there was a video of a guy jumping over a mid-sized car length wise in basketball sneakers. People came up with 101 reasons why the video was a fake; people were absolutely convinced it was not possible especially sense at the time, the athlete had no interest in being filmed independently and/or testing his skills in an actual long jump. The discussion went away, with everyone assuming it was hoax. First of all, the athlete accomplished this feat just messing around with his friends. He was labeled a hoaxer especially by the t&f community by goofing around with his friends. It was definitely not a fake; in fact, I watched one of my athletes do the same exact thing. This athlete jumped 22 feet as a high school junior, he didn’t compete in track his senior year because it conflicted with his AAU basketball schedule. At this time he was a college sophomore who didn’t make his college basketball team as walk-on for the 2nd time and decided to start jumping again over the summer between his sophomore and junior year. I converted him from long jumper to a high jumper and he was able to earn a D1 scholarship as a high jumper. Basically, my athlete was able to jump over a car because of his incredible vertical leaping ability, a mid-sized car is only about 17-18 feet long, which is a distance high school girls can long jump; however, a car is about 5 feet high so you need to have very good vertical leaping ability, which is sometime the original car jumper had. Btw, the original car jumper has since repeated the feat many several times (probably somewhere on youtube) and at one point was a basketball player with the AND 1 program. (Strange does not equal cheating!) |
| Bowermun |
| ||
[quote]d2xccoach wrote: Anyone who crossed the mats 4:34 after the gun would have been well behind everyone else and would have stood out as a lone runner on that Youtube video. And that literally would have been the last second to get a chip activated before we unplug the boxes and load them to move to the finish. quote] Can you provide a link to the Youtube video? I wonder if we'll see a "spectator" near the mats at 4:34. |
| Bowermun |
| ||
This was one of the first things that clued people into Kip's cheating. He was able to win marathons without being photographed when everyone around him had multiple shots taken of them. |
| Orange marker turn around cone |
| ||
This post is what makes the most sense to me. A lot of things can't be reasonably explained, but GK's (I don't know him or what his name is) post is what I can relate to. Without videotape proof, one or more reliable witnesses or photographs, he (GK) and he alone would know if someone passed him with about a mile to go. If GK is telling the truth, which I believe he is, then that's the end of the story for me. Did he cheat in every race? Doubtful. Did he finish in front of GK in the above race, apparently so. The question is how did he get there? Is someone helping him? Is someone creating a minor distraction to get people to look in their direction and then he jumps in? Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Think of the sporting events where a playing barks like a dog and they all look. Laugh, but everyone looks and doesn't know what's going on around them. But if the above poster says this guy didn't pass him then the convo is over. I too thought the guy looked a little too big to be running that pace at age 49. I've run in the 2:30's and several in the 2:40's. I have never seen anyone that size around me in 17 marathons. I am 5'11" and 140, not huge and not a bloody pole either. Again, it doesn't add up and I will take GK's word for it that the guy never passed him. He would have remembered as any of us reading this thread would have as well. Cheers! |
| Study of K.Litton Running |
| ||
Do you think Kip Litton's wife (an attorney) is going to threaten to sue us? |
| road rashed |
| ||
good luck as it is obvious to most that he hasn't only cheated in races, but that he has committed charity fraud. Going to be hard to find a lawyer to get behind a weird case like that where there is a myriad of evidence against him. |
| Pages: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Read more: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3857007&page=4#ixzz1A8LK4Aw9
Buy your shoes from LetsRun and save 20% everday http://www.letsrun.com/save
No comments:
Post a Comment