Worst Cheaters In Athletics – When Cheating Backfires

The following athletes made history a bit differently than they expected. Running is a pastime filled with genuine joy and motivation for runners. That is why it’s baffling to her about athletes who decide to cheat and happily accept the prizes. Still, some commit fraud for some reason and make a name for themselves as the worst cheaters in athletics.

The Unique Interpretation of Running a Marathon

Boston Marathon is the oldest marathon race in the world and one of the most prestigious. However, there is one more reason why this race made headlines: exposing one of the biggest frauds in the history of athletics. Rosie Ruiz won the women’s race in the 1980 Boston Marathon. She could enjoy her win for eight days, and then she was stripped of her first place. 

Even though she had a week to celebrate, the scandal broke out right after the event. First, there were only accusations, but it soon turned out that Ruiz did not run the whole distance. There were several telling signs like, even though it was a sunny day when Ruiz crossed the finish line, she was not sweaty at all despite the fact that her 2 hours 31 minutes 56 seconds time result was the third best of all time back then. 

In addition, her previous best result was 2 hours 56 minutes at the 1979 New York race, so she showed an impossibly fast improvement. The next telltale sign was that she was at a loss when a reporter asked about her interval training. Then, a few days after the marathon, witnesses came forward. They said that 800 meters before the finish line, they saw a competitor stepping out of the crowd of spectators and starting sprinting.

Worst Cheaters in Athletics

At first, they thought that someone was just joking. However, the next day, they saw in the newspapers that Rosie Ruiz had won. That was when they went to The Boston Globe, and that was how the fraud was revealed. In the end, her undoing was that not long after, the subway story also came to light. An eyewitness noticed at the race in New York a year earlier that Ruiz covered part of the marathon distance by subway. 

However, since she finished 11th place, no one took the claim seriously. When they found the videotape, proving the cheating, so she was disqualified eventually. Ruiz never confessed to the fraud, nor did she return her Boston gold medal, but people consider her the worst cheater in athletics. Among runners, even a new term was born called doing a Rosie, which obviously means cheating and taking shortcuts. A few years later, she was charged with stealing, forgery, and drug dealing but got away with probation. She died in 2019 at 66 years old.

Worst Cheaters in Athletics

There are some situations in life where having a twin comes in handy. For example, if someone wants to cheat on an ultramarathon. Sergio and Feko Motsoeneng came up with the master plan, that they would run the 90-kilometer-long Comrades Marathon as a relay race. At first, it didn’t seem like such a bad plan since the two twin brothers were hard to tell apart. The idea was manageable, but the execution failed due to a tiny error. 

Although, they did not make the same mistake as Rosie Ruiz, who overdid it and won. The two brothers finished ninth in a 1999 race, earning roughly $500. However, they were busted not long after, thanks to a journalist. Two photos had been released, one of which shows Sergio Motsoeneng wearing his watch in his right hand, but on the other, it’s on his left hand. 

It turned out that the brothers ran the distance in relays, changing vests and shoes several times in different mobile toilets. However, the photos were evidence of them cheating, and the Motsoeneng brothers received a ten-year ban. After being branded as one of the worst cheaters in athletics, the otherwise talented athlete managed to make a comeback. In 2010, he finished third, but this time, alone. 

A Bunch of Cheaters

At the Eldoret Half Marathon, a whole group of runners decided that it was unnecessary to run all 21 kilometers. You can find the video at online gambling sites in Kenya, where dozens of athletes were waiting calmly for the first runners to show up.

 Then they joined the competitors as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. Since the race was poorly organized, no one could prevent cheating. The judges tried to filter out the cheaters but were not sure they found all of them. Several runners suggested repeating the race, but it didn’t happen, and it was not the only time many runners had the same thought.

Hundreds of Cheaters at Once

You can place bets at 22Bet Sportsbook on several running events, but no one could have predicted what happened here. Dozens of scammers got caught cheating at the Shenzhen half-marathon running race in 2018. According to the organizers, 258 runners tried to cheat! At least 18 runners used false start numbers, and 237 ran a shorter distance. The latter were caught by the photographers taking pictures of the competition and the cameras monitoring the roads in Shenzhen. 

Some of them were pretty canning because a dozen runners cut through the bushes at one stage of the race. There would have been one more kilometer until the track turned around, meaning that those who fought their way through the bushes ran two kilometers less, almost ten percent of the 21-kilometer race distance. The organizers banned from the race for life the cheaters messing with the starting number and the three runners who ran in place of others and penalized the rest.

Worst Cheaters in Athletics

Scammer Kendall Schler wanted to repeat her previous year’s performance at the St Louis marathon. She finished third then but didn’t run the whole distance even then. The plan was simple: she started the race, stopped, then joined again near the finish line.

However, in 2015, she made the biggest mistake and reentered the race before Andrea Karl, who was in the first place. She was celebrated as the winner for twenty minutes, but then, of course, the cheating came to light. Later, she admitted to removing the timing strip from her bib, so her time result was not recorded.

They took away her results from last year and the bronze medal she won then. Schler certainly didn’t want to win the competition that year either just miscalculated the order. The case reminds us of the marathon race of the 1896 Olympics. The winner Spiridon Lúisz and the silver medalist Kharilaos Vasilakos were soon followed by the also Greek Spiridon Belokas and the Hungarian Gyula Kellner. The organizers stripped Belokas of his third place when it turned out he covered part of the distance by car.

Taking the bus during a marathon

Rob Sloan felt so tired at the 32nd kilometer of the Kielder Water Marathon that he decided to hop on a bus. Though many think that competitors don’t make such a hasty decision during a race, so he probably planned it. Sloan jumped off the vehicle into a wooded area of the park and hid until the lead emerged. He didn’t want to be in the first two, so he only ran out of his hiding spot once those two passed by him. 

The then 31-year-old man took the trophy for third place happily, without a hint of guilt, but his joy was over soon. Witnesses came forward who saw him cheating. However, that was not what made him one of the worst cheaters in athletics. It was because Sloan vehemently denied the claim at first, but eventually, they wore him down, and he confessed to taking the bus. On a better note, click on the link and check out the unique running races around the world!

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