Confusion reigns in half-marathon
By Hal Habib
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 31, 2005
MIAMI — A half-hour after crossing the finish line first in the Miami Tropical Half Marathon, Ohio's Debbi Kilpatrick-Morris still wasn't certain she was the champion. West Palm Beach's Sonja Friend-Uhl wasn't sure if she placed second or third.
Blame the confusion on Pennsylvania's Veena Reddy and a staggered start separating elite runners from the rest of the field.
Reddy, 26, eventually was credited with second place, which evidently was better than she expected, because rather than lining up in the front with the elite runners, she was among the everyday runners corralled at the starting line.
The problem with that: The elite runners were given a head start of nearly two minutes. Kilpatrick-Morris finished 1 hour, 18 minutes, 32 seconds after the first starting gun, followed by Reddy (1:18:49 after the first gun) and Friend-Uhl (1:19:05). But, Kilpatrick-Morris and coach Jeff Hlinka feared, what about that initial 1:54 gap between the starts? Would that be factored into the official results, propelling Reddy into first place?
No.
"The way it works is like this: It doesn't matter where you start. Gun time rules," race director Robert Pozo said after checking with scorers from the New York City and Olympic Trials marathons. "The general consensus is it doesn't matter where you start."
Major races routinely seed runners to prevent faster runners from getting trapped behind the masses. Some events, like Miami, take it a second step by having staggered starts on what normally is the safe assumption that anyone in contention for prize money would enter the elite division.
After the race, Reddy was nowhere to be seen, leaving Kilpatrick-Morris and Friend-Uhl wondering what would happen.
"This has never happened to me," said Kilpatrick-Morris, who had no idea a woman behind her might have been running faster. She agreed with the final ruling, which netted her $1,000, saying, "How can you be race-competitive against somebody if you don't know they're there?"
Reddy was awarded $500 for second place and Friend-Uhl $250 for third. Friend-Uhl said the gap couldn't be used to handicap the scoring because it would turn the race into a time trial with unequal race conditions.
"When you start out being with the elites, you're two minutes ahead of everybody else and it's a smaller pack," Friend-Uhl said. "There were many stretches of miles where I was by myself because there was a pack ahead of me and behind me.
"You have momentum chasing people down against people trying to manage a pace on their own. (In that case) it's not a race together. It's a race against time."
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