Was 2019 Beijing Half-Marathon race also fixed?

A video of the end of the 2019 Beijing Half-Marathon shows striking similarities to last weekend’s controversial race, with a leading Chinese sports expert saying it calls into question every previous result.

Sunday’s Mengniu Beijing Half-Marathon finished with two Kenyans, Willy Mnangat and Robert Keter, and Ethiopian Dejene Hailu Bikila seemingly waving Asian Games marathon gold medallist He Jie through to cross the line first unchallenged.

The result was questioned widely on the mainland and abroad, and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports and organisers have launched an investigation.

Footage of the 2019 edition shows two Kenyan runners, Silas Kimeli Too and Daniel Kiprop, in first and second place, respectively, with China’s Liu Hongliang behind them in third.

With a couple of kilometres to go, Liu overtakes the pair for the first time. After overtaking Too, Liu turns to look at him and can be seen putting his right hand behind his back and making a sign with two fingers.

Too remained close behind Liu for the remaining five minutes of the 21km race. Liu completed the race in 1:05:24, two seconds faster than Too.

Too, Mnangat and Keter are represented by the same agent – Chinese woman Lin Lin.

The three runners wore race bibs, as with Sunday’s event, and were not identified as pacers.

In 2018, Liu was second in the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Half-Marathon. “It looks like what happened this year,” Chinese sports expert Mark Dreyer said after watching the video.

Following Sunday’s race, Mnangat initially said he let the Chinese athlete win, then claimed he was hired as a pacemaker and did not know why the organisers did not give him a pacer’s bib.

“From those comments it seems like they were all hired as pacemakers, right? But someone didn’t declare it, which is kind of [underhanded in] nature,” Dreyer said.

In the 2019 and 2024 races, organisers at the finish line put second- and third-place markers on the African runners, suggesting they also thought they were athletes. “If someone else has decided that they’re going to hire them as pacers but sign them up as runners, then you have to start questioning, why have they done that,” Dreyer said. Dreyer suggested several reasons, including trying to make the Chinese athletes look better. “For the sponsor, it’s great – a Chinese athlete beats elite runners from Africa,” he said. Agencies could be keeping prize money for the second- and third-placed finishers, but paying the athletes a pacer’s fee. “There is a need for agents and the agents need to get paid, but you can see how there is a potential for shadiness,” Dreyer added. The Post has not been able to contact Too and Kiprop. Organisers of the Beijing race, Lin and staff at Flying Sports, the agency she manages, have ignored repeated requests to speak to the Post.

But agency co-manager He Yingqiang is quoted in an article with Chinese sports media outlet Sina and goes into detail about what he and his partner, Lin, do.

Although He Yingqiang did not mention how much of a cut from prize money his company takes, he said elite athletes who come to China and ran a marathon in less than two hours and 10 minutes could earn US$5,000.

“Because of the dirty history of some agents in China not paying [athletes], athletic associations of several African distance-running powerhouses are now refusing to allow Chinese agents to legally broker their athletes and enter the industry,” He Yingqiang said.