🏃 Running | Suspicious win in Chinese marathon

Recreation Sports
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It is my understanding a pacemaker wouldn’t usually run the entire race?

Any marathon runners that can chime in.

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Lolol.
Deliberately slowed down to let him win.

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They really thought he could beat Kenyans without people being suspicious

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This is the video. They don’t even look tired :joy:

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Pacers for recreational / noncompetitive runners generally do, for elite, no (partly cause they can’t keep pace for the whole thing, or they’d be the elite runner).

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:joy::joy:

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He paid them enough to do it, but not enough to not humiliate him.

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What a joke.

I understand it’s also being mercilessly mocked by folks in the PRC too.

Guy

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I saw this video yesterday and didn’t think much of it. They appeared to be demonstrating good sportsmanship by letting a disadvantaged runner win, in the same way that an adult would let a child win a race.

That’s what it seemed like to me, so I just assumed the Chinese runner was in some way disadvantaged and didn’t look further into the incident. :man_shrugging:t2:

Maybe they thought Africans ran faster than Asians and that it wasn’t a fair race? :laughing:

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I know there have been instances of a pacemaker (“the rabbit”) winning the race when he or she was supposed to drop out at a certain point.

BTW, I couldn’t find anything related to how He was a pacemaker in the article. There’s obviously something very fishy going on with the race in Beijing.

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What’s the angle though? Did they interview anyone on it? It doesn’t seem to be a typical rabbit situation.

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Keep pace, lose face.

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Yes, quite common to have a pacer to lead a group of runners for certain targets ie for sub three hour marathons. Usually has a helium balloon tied round the waist in Taiwan races.

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To keep him on his feet. If he’s too tired, he just let the balloon carry him and drag him to the finish line.

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I was curious as to why the pace runners have a helium balloon, so I googled it.

It’s very interesting, but kind of obvious.

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image

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It makes it so much easier to measure your own effort plus there’s great camaraderie running in a group.

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Looking forward to see the results on this so called “investigation “ :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Our conclusions affirm that the glorious Chinese race has suffered 5000 years of humiliation, and finally the great running rejuvenation has occurred, allowing the glorious Chinese civilization to stick to to those imperialist running dogs from . . . Kenya.

Hold on . . . I think my ChatGPT PRC language generator mixed up a few things there. :grin:

Guy

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