Showing posts with label forensic detective work by athletes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forensic detective work by athletes. Show all posts

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Swim. Bike. Cheat?; New York Times, 4/8/16

Sarah Lyall, New York Times; Swim. Bike. Cheat? :
"The winners were announced: Julie Miller first, Susanne Davis second. “She didn’t come down and shake our hands,” Davis said, referring to Miller. “In my entire 20 years of racing, I’ve never had that happen. That’s when I looked at her and said: ‘Gosh, I didn’t see you. Where did you pass me?’ ”
Miller replied that she had been easily recognizable in her bright green socks and then all but ran off the awards stage, Davis said, telling Davis that she would see her at the world championships in Kona, Hawaii.
Davis compared notes with the third- and fourth-place finishers. They, too, were mystified. They had not seen Miller on the course, either.
This odd series of events eventually touched off an extraordinary feat of forensic detective work by a group of athletes who were convinced that Miller had committed what they consider the triathlon’s worst possible transgression. They believed she had deliberately cut the course and then lied about it.
Dissatisfied with the response of race officials, they methodically gathered evidence from the minutiae of her record: official race photographs, timing data, photographs from spectators along the routes, the accounts of other competitors and volunteers who saw, or did not see, Miller at various points. Much of it suggested that Miller simply could not have completed some segments of the race in the times she claimed, and all of it raised grave questions about the integrity of her results at Whistler and other races."