TRIATHLETE TRIPPED UP
CANADIAN RUNNER DISGRACED FOR ALLEGEDLY CUTTING COURSE IN B.C.
The race was tough and the conditions dr e a df ul — 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and 26.2 miles of running, mostly in freezing rain — but Susanne Davis crossed the Ironman Canada finish line last July certain she had won her category, women aged 40-44.
Davis, who comes from Carlsbad, Calif., and is one of the top triathletes in her age group in the world, had been first out of the water and first off her bike — she was sure of it. Spectators using a cellphone race app that shows competitors’ relative positions called out encouragement, telling her she was ahead by a comfortable 10 minutes. As she ran, Davis looked out for rivals, asking the age of every woman she passed or who passed her, and encountered none from her age group.
Yet there she was, accepting the medal for second place at the awards ceremony the next day, five minutes behind a Canadian triathlete named Julie Miller who seemed to have materialized from nowhere and somehow won the race.
Miller, the mother of two young daughters, is a mentalhealth counsellor specializing in body- image disorders in Squamish. She is also a serious triathlete with a long record of success.
Before last year’s race, in Whistler, she had won her division in the 2013 Ironman Canada, the 2014 Vancouver Triathlon and the 2014 Long Course World Championships in Weihai, China, where she competed for Canada and where her win briefly made her the world champion for her age group.
Davis knew none of that. All she knew was that in more than three hours of hyperconscious running, she had not seen Miller once.
The winners were announced: Julie Miller first, Susanne Davis second.
“She didn’t come down and shake our hands,” said Davis, speaking of 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 fourthplace 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 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 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.
Three weeks after winning Ironman Canada, Miller was disqualified from the race, her time erased, her firstplace finish voided. Soon after, she was disqualified from two previous races that she had also won. Ironman has barred her indefinitely from its competitions.
“We can’t prove what happened on the course in Ironman Canada in 2015, or what her intent was,” said Keats McGonigal, the regional director for Ironman. “People can make their own judgments and decisions.
“But what we can prove is that it would have been impossible for her to be at specific points at specific times and still get to the fin- ish line when she did.” Miller denies it all. “It doesn’t really make any sense,” said Claire Young, of Kelowna, B.C., who, after Miller was ultimately disqualified, took second place in Ironman Canada. “Most of us are essentially racing against ourselves. There’s no money and no glory. It’s just a hobby, and if you cheat, who are you cheating? You’re only cheating yourself.”
Questions swirled around Miller’s performance as soon as she crossed the finish line at Ironman Canada, on July 26, 2015. The race was held in Whistler, a site of the 2010 Winter Olympics just north of Squamish.
Miller finished in 10 hours 49 minutes 3 seconds, a time recorded manually by an official positioned at the finish line and confirmed by photographs and video images of her crossing it. There was a problem, though: she was missing her timing chip.
Ironman athletes are re- quired to wear timing chips, affixed to Velcro straps they usually wrap around their ankles. Miller said that the chip had come off as she changed her clothes during the biketo- run transition. Race records show that, indeed, her chip had recorded a time of 7:17:50 at the end of the bike ride, before going silent.
According to Ironman rules, no chip means no time. Miller was on the verge of being disqualified.
Later that night, the official results, posted online, showed that Miller had been disqualified.
But athletes can plead for reinstatement under special circumstances. That’s what Miller did the next morning. In a confrontation with McGonigal, the Ironman regional director, she argued losing her chip had been an unfortunate accident that should not disqualify her. He believed her, he said, because parts of her story checked out.
The awards ceremony took place at Whistler’s Olympic Plaza, and three women — Davis, Claire Young and Marla Zucht — arrived believing they had taken the first three spots in their division.
Indeed, few people who had been paying close attention seemed to think Miller had legitimately won the race the day before.
Other athletes, including James Young, began to investigate further. Among other things, he studied the images taken by cameras positioned along the course and posted on race websites.
Ironman officials say they were not aware of the other athletes’ concerns until early August, when McGonigal received a flurry of angry emails urging him to reconsider the results.
Ironman barred Miller indefinitely from its races, citing repeated rule violations — the harshest penalty given in memory.
Miller declined to be interviewed for this article.
IT’S JUST A HOBBY, AND IF YOU CHEAT, WHO ARE YOU CHEATING?
ONLY YOURSELF.