Canadian Olympic marathoner proven right after Edmonton race controversy
The Canadian Half Marathon Championships caused quite a stir after being held in Edmonton this past weekend.
While it appeared that the event went off without much trouble, athletes were left scratching their heads after completing the half marathon course. Many felt that their finishing times were a lot slower than they anticipated, leading some to allege that the course had been mismeasured, effectively forcing participants to run longer than the 21.1 kilometres a half marathon requires.
Canadian Olympic athlete Rory Linkletter, who wound up winning the Edmonton race on the men’s side, was among the runners who felt something was off about the course.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Hive, the 30-year-old Calgary native alleged that the turnaround point of the course had been mismeasured, which caused athletes to run a longer distance than needed for a half marathon.
Linkletter told Daily Hive he believes it was a simple math mistake that caused the issue.
“They added a full section that was 712 metres long to avoid construction,” Linkletter said. “They needed to bring the turnaround point 712 metres back, closer to the start-line… I knew that turnaround was not adequately closer; it was too far out.
“They only moved the turnaround back 350 meters, so they accidentally divided instead of doubled. They needed to account for the fact that we run each section twice, and they just didn’t account for that. It was just a simple math error, an honest mistake.”
Marathon organizers originally pushed back on that notion, blaming problems with athlete GPS systems, but the Edmonton Marathon reversed that position on Tuesday evening, releasing a statement saying that the course had indeed been mismeasured.
The total distance added was 674.7 metres.
“After receiving notes from participants, including elite athletes, that the course ran longer than its certified distance, we undertook a detailed review of the physical measurement of the certified course,” Tom Keogh, the Edmonton Marathon race director, said in a statement. “That review has identified an error in how this year’s detour-related course adjustments were calculated, and for that we sincerely apologize.
“The event owns this error, and we take full responsibility. We appreciate the many participants who have emailed and the ones that we have followed up with to have additional conversations. While we pursued the highest level of professional course measurement and certification available, an error occurred.”
The issue did, in fact, stem from the turnaround point, which Keogh said did not fully offset a detour earlier in the course.
Linkletter says he did not notice anything wrong with the course until about the 15-kilometre point, where he noticed that his time had indicated that he had slowed down by a considerable margin.
When he passed the finish line, he found that he was far from the only participant who had noticed something fishy was going on with the course.
“At 15 [kilometres], it had suggested I slowed down by a substantial margin, and I was like, ‘Well, I didn’t slow down.’ I know this because I’m winning the race and I’m speeding up, actually; my gap is growing,” Linkletter said.
“There wasn’t a single person that didn’t notice it. We all run so much, and we’ve all done so many races, it’s actually comical to me that they tried to tell us all that we’re crazy, that we all lost our minds.”
For Linkletter, who has been running professionally since 2019, to have never experienced something like this proves just how bizarre the whole situation is. He says that the best thing Athletics Canada can do to rectify the situation is to tell runners how long the course actually was and to not make this kind of mistake moving forward.
“It’s just really frustrating because I knew they were going to deny it at first,” Linkletter said. “I’m not mad at the race or the race organizers about how it happened on race day… There have been things that happened like this before in other races.”
Many runners who participated in the Edmonton Marathon ran qualifying times for future races, which were definitely affected by the measurement error. Keogh said that they are working with Athletics Canada to help get the proper times recognized.
“We do not take this lightly. We understand that every participant arrives at the start line having invested months of dedicated training, hard work, courage and deeply held goals.” Keogh said. “The integrity of the course distance is fundamental, and we acknowledge that we did not deliver the standard participants deserved.
“Moving ahead, we will review our certification processes with our partners and ensure this error does not happen again.”