Think you won the marathon Arien O'Connell, wrong

At the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, 24-year-old Arien O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher from New York City, ran the fastest time of any of the women but didn't win. Huh?

While O'Connell had the greatest run of her life and covered the course faster than any woman, she was told she couldn't be declared the winner because she didn't run with the "elite" group who were given a 20-minute head start. Now race officials look like a bunch of idiots because they didn't give the first place trophy to the person who ran the fastest, instead it went to someone who finished 11 minutes slower than O'Connell's 2 hours 55 minutes 11 seconds. When you kick someone's ass by 11 minutes, you won the thing.

At this point," Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez said Monday, "we've declared our winner."
O'Connell said some race officials actually implied she'd messed up the seeding by not declaring herself an "elite" runner.
"If you're feeling like you're going to be a leader," race producer Dan Hirsch said Monday, "you should be in the elite pack."

Of course race officials call in the big dogs to give the really shady answers to the simple questions of why the fastest isn't the winner and here is the explanation from Jim Estes, associate director of the long-distance running program for USA Track and Field.

He's had some practice with the issue. The Sunday before last, at the Chicago Marathon, a Kenyan named Wesley Korir pulled off a similar surprise, finishing fourth even though he wasn't in the elite group and started five minutes after the top runners.
In that situation, and in this one, Estes made the same ruling: It didn't count. O'Connell wasn't declared the winner and Korir didn't collect fourth-place prize money.
"The theory is that, because they had separate starts, they weren't in the same race," Estes said. "The woman who is winning the elite field doesn't have the opportunity to know she was racing someone else."
Estes admits that giving the elite runners a sizable head start may not be the best policy.
"These are things this race and other races need to look at," Estes said. "It comes down to what a race is, and who is racing who."

In other words, we f--ked up and it's just too bad for you.

But the story has a somewhat happy ending; O'Connell said she was contacted early this morning by a Nike representative who said they were going to award her a trophy and recognize her as a winner.
Not the winner - "a" winner, which is another complete load of crap, there is not multiple winners, there is only one winner.
"She told me they had been getting lots of calls and e-mails," said O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher in New York City. "She said they were going to send me the same prize as the one awarded to the winner."