UKA not enforcing the category rules at the London Marathon?

[ferretface]

Hi, I ran the London Marathon on Sunday along with many other strong and dedicated women, it was a pleasure to run alongside you!

It looks like the female category is not actually being applied? There seem to be at least two examples of someone being listed in the female results who is open about being trans. I don't want to turn this into a personal witch hunt if there are no category shenanigans going on (maybe it's just the way that the results are displayed?) but Mara has already identified one of them and Women's Health had a recent interview with the other I'm aware of.

I beat both of them by more than an hour but that's not the point. Are women who didn't not entitled to a proper category placing? One of them ran a time that's not a million miles away from GFA, when they move up in age categories they'd probably be in contention if they maintain performance.

I'm sad to see this as this year's London marathon had some really good initiatives focused on women. They had female urinals at the starts and it's the first year I've run it where they've offered a choice of T shirt which doesn't treat "male = unisex".

A female relative of my DP ran it as well. well done, such an amazing achievement and you should be so proud of yourself! I quite agree about this, what's the point of rules if they are ignored?

x.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1782451082347602302?s=46&t=SPorwN-mokktL467rcZ57g

If I'm being graceful I guess these are only provisional results and there are more than 50,000 runners. But I would expect anyone competing in the wrong category to be recategorised for the final results surely? Is it really for women to go through and call it out when people are cheating?

These men show how little respect and sisterhood they have for us when they blatantly break the rules 😡

for a fun run how would you suggest they enforce the male/female split? Check every entries social media to see if they are trans? Ask people to witch hunt and point out trans names to them? You can’t just wait at the finish line and cross reference every race number against their sex category once you’ve seen their appearance.

there are checks and balances at professional level but I you can’t stop it at amateur level.

"fun run" tells me everything I need to know about how you view sport

i love sport. I love running and have done several half marathons myself (still working up to marathon)! . You know exactly what I meant by fun run I meant amateur runs. That doesn’t change the fact it would be impossible to enforce any sort of rule like that at amateur level. Hell you could probably get people lying about their age to score higher in the age categories and they are unlikely to follow up on someone doing that either, maybe if they won their age category and it was really blatant but I’m not sure even then.

I would also add any run where people can do it dressed as a bus or drinking 26 glasses of wine en route is a fun run .

That doesn’t change the fact it would be impossible to enforce any sort of rule like that at amateur level.

Probably right that you can't stop men cheating by entering as a " woman", however, once organisers have been informed of this cheating they should be reassigned to the male category.

Exactly.

Congratulations on your run, @ferretface, I am in awe!

You have every right to expect fairness and for the women's times to be recorded separately. Placing matters.

It is also the case that the public and organisers can condemn it.

There was the same problem last year.

I can post a link to the thread on it if people want.

Has anyone run in the wrong age category? Yes I think if they have, the record should be corrected once it's known.

'How are you going to know' - the point is to make it clear to entrants that categories are not optional, not to impose a huge unworkable set of checks on the whole event. Amateur events rely on people sticking to the rules. The point is that you trust people to enter themselves in the right category, and that there's a process to correct the record if a person is found to have gone into another category.

I really can't imagine referring to the London Marathon as a 'fun run'.

Would you also call it a "witch hunt" if a participant cut off a loop and was subsequently disqualified? It's happened before at marathons. This is no different.

Hmm . I think the difference there is people are tagged and tracked around the course so it would be pretty easy to prove or disprove if someone skipped chunks of the course and it wouldn’t be based on someone’s appearance.

but if people were trying to point out a person couldn’t of completed the race in whatever time because they don’t look fit enough then yeah I’d call that a witch hunt.

my point was, if I tell you race number 123 is registered on their system as female but they are actually male and they came right in middle of their sex /age class what do you want the organisers to do? Ring runner 123 and ask if she’s registered correctly? Look through the marathon photos to check? Etc . I guess you could argue for how things should work even if its impractical hence someone saying organisers should at least condemn it. I just think organisers are stuck between rock and hard place on this one even if they did want to enforce sex binary. Which I’m not sure they do for the amateur races given they only just brought in a non-binary category last year and marathons at amateur level are regarded more as a race against yourself than other people.

Some participants choose to treat the London Marathon as noncompetitive, as is their right because their personal perspective doesn't affect anyone else, does that mean it is no longer a competitive opportunity for everyone else who chooses to see it racing? I know that every year some people from the champs start decide to have an easy day and run for the experience rather than a place, does that mean it's no longer the British marathon championships?

They made a rule for a reason. Why is it a witch hunt to call out people who appear to be actively choosing to disobey it? I'd call out course cutters just the same (and have done).

Bluntly, it's impossible to stop amateurs from doping. And we know that a percentage - intentionally or not - will do so.

But it's still a breach of the rules.

It still leads to disqualification if caught.

There have been events where runners have cut the course. Or got a lift. Or caught the bus. There will have been people who did that at London. But if they're caught they're disqualified.

You're right - there's no practical way to 100% enforce people running in the correct sex category. But if they're discovered to have breached the rules on this then they should be disqualified, exactly the same way those who are caught doping or taking the bus should be.

"Cheaters going to cheat" isn't really an excuse for the organisers not taking a firm stand on examples of cheating brought to their attention

334bu · 23/04/2024 21:16

Probably right that you can't stop men cheating by entering as a " woman", however, once organisers have been informed of this cheating they should be reassigned to the male category.

I think that they should have their records deleted and be banned, just like other cheats.

Yeah I've never really found the "men are gonna do it anyway" argument that compelling, whether it's being used in the context of fair competition or the risk of rape.

I have sons. I really want to believe in a world where we expect better from men, rather than shrug our shoulders in indifference at their behaviour. If our facilities and opportunities are to be equally accessible to women and girls, then everyone needs to care about this at every level.

https://x.com/mara_yamauchi/status/1783871107075895511?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

This was on X. A male who raced in the Manchester Marathon (14th April 2024) as a female has been removed from the results.

I'm a competitive marathon runner and I can't get too worked up about this. What's people are clearly found to have been cheating, yes they should be moved to the correct category.
But I'm not sure the placing matters too much to most runners unless you're inside the top 10 or so in your category. I couldn't give a flying fuck if I'm 57th or 58th woman, for example. It makes no tangible difference to my life.
Where I do think we need to be having this discussion, though, is around qualifying times for GFA - which really do affect people. I find it utterly bonkers that GFA times for non-binary runners are the same as for women, given that surely many people in this category will be either a) born male or b) born female and on testosterone. As this plays out over the next few years I fear we will be seeing mediocre men identifying as non-binary to run a GFA time for London or Boston and therefore qualify through a route that wasn't available before. I hope I'm wrong.

For full disclosure, yes I comfortably run GFA times every year, so could run London every year if I wanted to. But changes like this could make a real difference to women who are just on the cusp of the GFA threshold, if the cut-offs become tougher due to more people qualifying through this route.