Runner faked marathon victory
Rosie Ruiz, who has died aged 66, was a Cuban American who earned a place in the annals of sporting chicanery when she ‘‘won’’ the Boston Marathon in April 1980, only for it to be discovered that she had joined the course in the last few hundred yards.
Cheating in marathons goes back to the 1896
Olympics, when the
Greek Spiridon
Belokas won bronze before admitting he had hitched a lift on a horse and carriage. Rosie Ruiz’s tactics were not dissimilar.
When she crossed the finishing line, her time of 2 hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds was the third-fastest ever to be recorded by a female runner. Crowned with the winner’s laurels, she gave a triumphant interview on national television. She loved running, she said. This was only her second marathon. No, she had never been tired. The newspapers went wild, hailing her achievement as a victory for the underdog.
Curiously, though, Jackie Gareau, the Canadian runner who had led at the 13, 21 and 24-mile marks, could not remember being passed or seeing the victor anywhere. Journalists, too, smelt a rat when, in her response to a question about her approach to
interval training (workouts designed to improve a runner’s speed), Ruiz replied: ‘‘I don’t know what that is.’’
Later, race officials claimed to have suspected all along that something was amiss. She had not even worked up a sweat and her thighs were not those of a top-class long-distance runner.
Further inquiries established that no-one could remember having seen Ruiz during the race and there was no record of her having passed any checkpoint.
An inquiry was launched and witnesses came forward to report that they had seen her burst out of the crowd half a mile from the tape, round about Kenmore Square, after which she was seen running the final stages without ‘‘style or form’’. It seems that she had started the race in Cambridge but then taken the subway to Boston.
A couple of days later a freelance photographer telephoned the New York Times to say that she had seen Ruiz during the New York City Marathon the previous year riding the subway, and had walked with her from the station at Columbus Circle to a barrier about 15 metres from the finish, where she had presented herself as an injured runner, asked for access to the medical tent and limped to the line.
She had recorded a time of 2hr 56min, thereby qualifying for the Boston event.
The New York organisers retrospectively disqualified her first, but Boston continued with its investigation. After eight days they quashed her ‘‘victory’’ and gave the title to Jackie Gareau.
But Ruiz never admitted that she had cheated and never returned her medal. As Rob Baghi remarked in the Daily Telegraph, ‘‘If only Southern Rail had run that franchise, we would never have heard of her’’.
Now, whenever the Boston Marathon is held, a pub on Kenmore Square puts up a banner – ‘‘Rosie Ruiz started here’’.
No-one could remember having seen Ruiz during the race and there was no record of her having passed any checkpoint.
Rosie Ruiz was born in Havana, and was eight when she emigrated to the United States. During her brief career as a marathon runner, she was working as a secretary at a commodities trading firm in Manhattan.
She then became a book-keeper for a real estate firm and made national headlines in 1982 when she was charged with stealing cash and cheques from her employer. She was sentenced to a week in jail and five years’ probation.
The following year she was arrested on charges of attempting to sell cocaine to undercover agents, and she spent three weeks in jail.
Her marriage to Aicardo Vivas ended in divorce and she is survived by her partner, Margarita Alvarez, and three sons.
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