Running cheats using ‘bib mules’ and short cuts in amateur races

Organisers increasingly having to ban athletes using illegal methods to record impressive times

EVERY weekend, up and down the country, thousands of amateur sportsmen and women take part in fun runs and marathons; some to beat their mates or personal bests, many to raise money for charity and – astonishingly for a sport at this level – some to cheat.

A growing body of evidence is emerging to show that a small but significant number of runners are cheating in amateur races. By using a variety of methods, from banned drugs to simply taking short cuts and missing out sections of the route, they are able to shave seconds and even minutes off their times.

There have even been cases of runners giving their race number to a faster runner – named a “bib mule” – and logging that person’s result as their own.

David Hart, of the Great Run Company, which organises the Great North Run and other mass participation events, told The Sunday Telegraph: “I’m afraid we’ve seen quite a bit of this in recent years. We’re not catching everybody, that’s for certain, and it’s very frustrating.”

Organisers of amateur events have been forced to take increasingly sophisticated steps to catch cheats and have blacklisted them from future events. Mr Hart said The Great North Run kept a list of individuals it has banned from entering after being caught cheating. He described the numbers as in “single figures”.

Recent high-profile cases included that of Natasha Argent, the 26-year-old sister of The Only Way Is Essex star James Argent, who was investigated after she finished the London Marathon in under four hours last year – missing out 11 of the 24 checkpoints along the route. Miss Argent later returned her finisher’s medal and claimed she had suffered a panic attack and got lost on the route. Organisers said she would be banned from any future London Marathon events. There was also the case of Jason Scotland-Williams, a personal trainer who ran the second half of the 2014 London Marathon faster than Mo Farah. Mr Scotland-Williams was investigated after claims he had squeezed through barriers to cut his race short by nine miles.

He denied cheating, saying he simply trained hard.

In 2011 Rob Sloan, a member of Sunderland Harriers, was accused of taking a spectator bus at the 20-mile point of the Kielder Marathon, before rejoining the race and coming third. He was later disqualified and thrown out of his club. Mr Sloan denied cheating, saying it was a case of mistaken identity

Mr Hart said: “There is fair amount of number swapping going on. We know there’s a temptation for some to duck under ropes to shave a couple of kilometres off a route. We weed out people on a regular basis.”

‘We know there’s a temptation for some to duck under ropes to shave a couple of kilometres off a route’

He also admitted it was likely that some amateur runners take performance-enhancing drugs, but that the volume of those taking part in amateur events makes it logistically impractical to introduce doping controls.

There are few statistics showing the extent of cheating in amateur races and it is unclear if the growing number of cases indicates that runners are increasingly willing to cheat, or whether organisers have become better at detecting attempts to beat the system.

The Great Run Company points out that a “miniscule proportion” of the 250,000 runners who cross their finish lines each year are found to have cheated. But it admits it is a potential scourge on the face of what should be an activity conducted in a spirit of fair play.

“Unfortunately it goes on it all walks of life and in all sports,” said Mr Hart. “At the end of the day it’s down to the individual’s moral code.”