NEW YORK, April 18 (Xinhua) -- A former marathoner in the United Sates kept exposing marathon cheats across the globe on the blog, catching at least 15 runners cheating in Boston Marathon race on Monday.
Derek Murphy, a business analyst who was once a marathon runner, started his monitoring after he occasionally featured a high-profile cheating scandal in a big race, according to BBC News.
"There was so much tension from those specific cases, I just wondered how many other people cheated," said Murphy.
He caught those cheaters by looking at missed split times in public race results, and peering into other clues like suspiciously fast race times, starting line and finish line photos, and bystander video footage recorded at races.
Among his investigations, there are many forms of cheating in a marathon. Some cut a few miles out of their qualifying race. Others give their racing bib to someone a bit faster. In rare cases, people pay to have their results altered.
"When it comes to qualifying for Boston, we rely on the race organizers and timing systems they employ to produce accurate results, and we also rely on the honesty and integrity of 99.99 percent of competitors who compete fairly in pursuit of their personal records," Murphy was quoted as saying by BBC.
Murphy thought the actual number of cheaters is higher than the 0.01 percent cited by the officials, but still a small percentage.
On his blog and social media page, some people criticized his investigation, saying he paid too much attention on those amateur runners.
Murphy hopes that more honest runners with qualifying times near the cut-off will be able to run the race because of his analysis.
