How would you feel if you were running a marathon and saw somebody whizz past you on a bike?
An influencer has been caught red-handed doing exactly that at the Berlin Marathon – before posing gleefully with her medals.
Chinese creator Sun Yuanyuan tricked her more than half a million followers by hitching a ride on the back of somebody’s bicycle at the race in late September.
She was perfectly happy to gloat about her personal best time until her lack of integrity came to light – and she has since lost her sponsorship from a brand called Brooks China.
‘This was an extremely dishonest act,’ she admitted on the social media platform RedNote. ‘I feel deeply guilty about this.
‘My opportunistic act was a sign of disrespect towards fair competition and the spirit of the marathon.
‘I offer my sincere apologies to everyone.’
An influencer has been caught sitting on the back of a BIKE at the recent Berlin Marathon (Instagram: officialunofficialtime)
But she was all too happy to pose with her medal in front of her 530,000 followers (RedNote: Abeeeer)
Sun explained that she had been feeling unwell, leading her to jump on the bike, but admitted that she hid this and posted about her success anyway.
She is not the first influencer to fiddle with the numbers and she will not be the last. The Official Marathon Time Integrity Unit (OMTUI), a body dedicated to exposing those telling fibs about their running times, has revealed dozens of cases of dishonesty over the last year.
A major theme appears to be athletes who have failed to break the three-hour barrier claiming that they have.
Rather than posting their official race time, athletes have been caught out posting the time they measured on Strava, which one is able to crop.
Moreover, an issue with Strava’s measurements is that it can suffer from GPS drift. Satellite signals can, for example, bounce off tall buildings, leading to the distance covered being misrepresented.
That means that Strava may tell athletes they have completed their marathon before they have reached the finishing line, allowing them to post that online and claim the credit. The discrepancy can be multiple minutes.
One influencer, going by the name of gingerjmduff on Instagram, is accused of skipping 10km of the race after being invited to compete by Revolut.
‘You have accepted a sponsored entry through a brand partner for one of the world’s most sought-after marathon places, only to leave the official course at approximately 22km, rejoin around the 32km mark, skipping a significant portion of the race,’ the OMTUI wrote.
‘The issue here is… accepting a place that hundreds of thousands of runners would dream of [without] having any intention of completing the race, then posing with a finisher’s medal reserved for those who actually finish.’
In Naples, an influencer called Corrado Ciamei was rumbled for posting an inaccurate Strava time where, digging into the details, he claimed he had completed one kilometre of the half-marathon in 52 seconds.
