Sports fraud is as old as the beginning of time. We all grew up with the news that a fallen superstar athlete cheated his way to shame, but usually it was always performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) that were the problem. Sooner or later people are always caught. Even Lance Armstrong was found out after many years of testing and denying.
We are now in the age of ordinary fraudsters. Of course, you can argue that the average Joe's uses PEDs, but doesn't get caught. At some events it is simply not logistically possible to test every single athlete – especially if the back-of-the-packers gain nothing by juicing. Nobody cares. Correct?
With all of the technology today, you have to ask yourself how people get away with it. It's also this technology that allows the scammer to find ways to do it – the New Age Lance Armstrong effect, if you like. A timing chip helps us see our race times and whether we have completed the stages of a race by crossing the electronic timing mat. It is not uncommon for there to be a time mat or malfunction of the chip, so the athlete's results will miss large periods of time. This will then be a welcome opportunity for athletes to shorten the course. We all know a man who knows a man who has done this. There's no way of knowing if a mat is out, but scammers aren't known to be honest, so they cut the course and blame the electronics. I suppose it makes them look good to their online peers and haters when they look like they have performed well. This year there was even the story of a woman giving her husband her timing chip and he ended the race for her. She even collected the finisher's medal! That has to be a step further than a "racial bandit" if we want to establish a scale of deception.
Please keep it legitimate
I once saw great Bart Yasso talk about some incredible running races he was involved in. While I was in awe of the first Death Valley race, it was the story of a marathon in a jungle, and it worked well here. He spoke of the indigenous children who stained them with colored dirt at certain points on the course, and when you crossed the finish line, they checked that you had all the colors. If you didn't, you were disqualified. Simple and yet effective.
Do we have to go back in time to make sure people are honest?? Do you care? As someone who has physically and emotionally trained for races and events for hours to undermine my hard work by someone who just looks good and wants to get the medal at all costs, it's annoying to say the least. The only benefit is that there are internet junkies and journalists who are now looking for and screaming for race scams – a little justice in the school yard on social media.
In a contingent pension system, athletes have to pay a fraction of their sports proceeds into a fund that they can only draw from after their career and if they have never been caught doing doping. In theory, this fund has two important advantages over traditional anti-doping measures such as bans and fines. It does not lose its deterrent effect as athletes approach the end of their careers (as opposed to bans), and it can solve the widespread problem that drug fraudsters are often found out much later after detection technology has caught up with doping practices.
-Wu et al., 2020
I have often wondered what the modern solution to this dilemma is. It may be a Garmin Connect report to race directors and finisher statistics, provided there are no problems with service area coverage or tunnels and overpasses. Perhaps a Strava-like app would work, as most people carry their phones for part or all of the race and submission to ensure accuracy. Whatever the solution, I have a feeling that fraud is not waning, it is escalating in ingenuity. Between PEDs, course reduction, chip manipulation and the extremely frequent drawing of bicycles, we reach epidemic proportions. So let's be part of the solution and not just cover our eyes.
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