Home >  Sports >  Other Sports

Sunday, May 12, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

About an hour after he finished second lastSunday in the UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon, Kenya's Eliud Kering accepted full responsibility for making a mistake that allowed eventual winner Reuben Chesang to take the lead as they entered Heinz Field.

Which didn't stop many from wondering if the mishap was really Kering's fault -- and whether it cost him the race.

"It was not that big of a deal," said marathon veteran Tammy Slusser, who watched the replay and thinks Chesang would have passed Kering anyway. "They're making it sound like he went 100 yards out of his way. He went a few steps and lost about a second. ... People run extra distance like that just getting to a water stop."

"It really wasn't that bad," said Jim Hummes, who didn't have any problem getting into the stadium, although he said the turn was abrupt. "If you're a Kenyan and you think you can win the race, you should probably know exactly how it's going to finish. I don't think it was the race director's fault or anything."

Other runners disagree. Chris Gibson, a veteran ultramarathoner and race director, doesn't think competitors should be put in a position where making a mistake is possible.

"A runner shouldn't have to pay any attention to the course," he said. "You or I could look and say, 'There's no question about how to do this,' but, when you're out there at this point, you're so depleted, mentally and physically. When you're running 26 miles at a 5-minute pace, you are focusing an incredible amount of attention on what you're doing.

"It may look like they're just cruising, but they have to be so tuned in to what's going on in their bodies that they really can't be too focused on what's going on outside."

Gibson pointed out that in particularly important marathons, such as the Olympic trials, a blue line is painted on the course to mark exactly where it was measured. If athletes follow the blue line, they automatically cut all of the tangents and run the shortest possible distance.

Slusser, who checked with a course official at the turn to make sure she was going the right way, said the course could have been marked more clearly, perhaps with cones, to make it impossible to go another direction.

Which is just the kind of solution race director Larry Grollman is preparing. "There's some things around Heinz Field that we want to mark better," he said. "That's part of the learning curve that you go through."

Although the marathon included the second-most competitors since UPMC took over title sponsorship in 1995 and enjoyed some of the best weather in the 18-year history of the event, it was plagued with a couple of mistakes.

Besides the controversial finish, the 5K race started seven minutes early -- something everyone, including Grollman, agreed was inexcusable -- and an inadvertent error by a timing official resulted in some marathoners' times being published as 31 minutes faster than they actually finished.

Rachel Remaley, one of the affected runners, was disappointed for two reasons. She wanted to save the newspaper for her scrapbook, something she won't do now because her time and place were wrong, and she felt sorry for the people who had actually finished in 3 hours, 55 minutes.

"I'm listed in the paper at what I consider to be a very high place for finishing, and there were people who were accurately in the paper but appear to have done worse than I did even though they didn't," she said.

The timing error was corrected as soon as Grollman was able to reach the timing official, Ann Gault, who was on her way home to Michigan and unavailable when it was discovered.

In a note with the corrected results, Gault said she was in the process of adjusting the times for relay runners who had completed the entire marathon while the timing tent was being dismantled; in the confusion, she pushed some incorrect buttons.

Grollman doesn't think the errors detracted from the entire marathon experience. Most runners appeared to like the new course, particularly seeing themselves on the Jumbotron as they entered the stadium. He was pleased that the marathon was the highest-rated sporting event on local television Sunday, beating the Pirates' game, and that the Rooney family has invited the marathon to use Heinz Field again.

Whether that's a possibility depends on the Major League Baseball schedule. If the Pirates have an afternoon game, the marathon can't finish at Heinz Field.