M60 winner at NYC Marathon exposed as cheater

[TrackCEO]

Ermes Luppi of Italy was at first listed as the M60 winner Sunday in an amazing 2:39:53, but after some checking, event organizers deleted his result from the official site. :roll:

Here's the story:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/002880.html

K E N

[Marlow]

It's on my Bucket List to run the first sub-2:20 for age 60+. I guess I need to find out his training secrets.

[TrackCEO]

The plot thickens.

A friend in Italy wrote Ermes on behalf.

Ermes claims he didn't run the NYC Marathon.

Many unanswered questions, including: How did Ermes' bib number make it to the finish line?

K E N

[guru]

Re: M60 winner at NYC Marathon exposed as cheater

Here's the story:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/002880.html

"Now that Luppi has been zapped from the 2008 results, it would be nice for someone to write him and check out his side of the story. I'm too shy."

Don't you think it would have been a good idea to "check out his side of the story" BEFORE you called him a cheater? Or maybe that's why you've suddenly become "shy". Nice journalistic work.

What likely happened here is nothing more nefarious than he gave his number to someone else when, for whatever reason, he didn't run.

[sprintblox]

Re: M60 winner at NYC Marathon exposed as cheater

What likely happened here is nothing more nefarious than he gave his number to someone else when, for whatever reason, he didn't run.

Or somebody else simply used his name (for whatever strange reason). After all, for most marathons you can register by mail and they don't require you to show up in person with ID. You'd probably have to show ID only if you want to collect prize money.

[tandfman]

He may not have run New York this year, but it appears that he has run it before. Not nearly that fast, of course.

http://www.athlinks.com/myresults.aspx?rid=5306916

[Master Po]

Some of us discussed this a bit on the NYC Marathon thread -- when the time was first noted in the thread, I looked up Ermes Luppi's history in the NYC Marathon archives, finding -- as others have -- a number of results over the years, all 1-2 hours +/- slower than 2:39. Seeing that, my first thought was not that Ermes Luppi, whoever he is, was a cheater, bc it would have been such an easy thing to detect with so many years of far slower results in the same race. I posted a link to the results database, and I figured teh 2008 time was either a database error, or the result of someone else using that name, which, as has been noted here, is easy to do.

There does seem to be some sort of error or fraud (which thus would be cheating), and it does involve Ermes Luppi's name, but the Ermes Luppi of 3:30-4:30 marathon times does not seem to be the agent of the error or fraud, at least based on what is now known.

That said, "Ermes Luppi" is a great name, and not surprising that it might be implicated in some athletic feat involving cunning, trickery, and athletic fleet-footedness...

[az2004]

a long time ago, before 1980, a friend had entered the winnipeg marathon, got injured a few weeks before the race, and past along the bib number to me...

a guy i met on the plane, we had dinner before and after the race, i told him my time, and the monday morning he looked at the paper, and said there was a wrong name for my time, altough it did mention philly as the place....

well, perhaps my story is repeated...

bib changes happen, don't they, and not just with a baby..

[TrackCEO]

I contacted Alan Miller, the real M60 winner at the NYC Marathon, and he graciously responded with his story:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/002883.html

He credits the M60 finisher behind him for triggering the investigation that led to "Ermes Luppi" being deleted from the results.

K E N

[Brian]

Re: M60 winner at NYC Marathon exposed as cheater

Ermes Luppi of Italy was at first listed as the M60 winner Sunday in an amazing 2:39:53, but after some checking, event organizers deleted his result from the official site. :roll:

Here's the story:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/002880.html

K E N

No Bengay for YOU!

[El Toro]

-- a number of results over the years, all 1-2 hours +/- slower than 2:39.

I'd like to see some of those times on the " -" side! :shock:

[TrackCEO]

Luppi admits he gave the bib and chip to "a friend."
http://www.podisti.org/webzine/index.ph ... Itemid=476

He's no newbie. He must have been aware this wasn't kosher.

K E N

[guru]

I'm sure your apology is in the mail.

[TrackCEO]

I'm sure your apology is in the mail.

Apology for what? :evil:

Even if I jumped the gun on the form his cheating took, Luppi still violated the code. It's wrong-wrong-wrong to perpetrate identity fraud.

He allowed someone to enter who hadn't paid.

He allowed the official results to carry a lie.

He denied the real M60 winner the immediate recognition due him. Alan Miller's gratification came days later!

Luppi is no newbie. He's run NYC at least nine times! He's probably heard of other identity cheats. He has a running shoe store in Modena, Italy, and I doubt his customers would forgive him if THEY lost a first-place prize due to his bib mischief.

The real question is -- Who will apologize to Alan Miller?:




K E N

[midnightsun]

I can vouch for him not running in NYC (I saw him on First Avenue as he stood there watching runners pass by) , and I also know the guy who ran with his bib since we live like 50 miles apart from each other. The guy who did run the marathon was "looking for a race number" in the weeks coming into the race but I let him know via third party people "not to mess" with the NYC marathon organization because I know they are strict (as they should be!!) about these fundamental competition rules (besides being obviously unjust to run essentially as a bandit), but he wouldn't listen (he apparently thought it was "no big deal" to run with another person's bib) so now he's made an a$$ of himself and disrespected the race, the organizers and its legit participants.