Thursday 11 June 2015

Mike Rossi investigation lives on

A while back I posted a summary of the evidence collected so far in regards to whether Mike Rossi, the guy who made his own unsent letter to a school principal go viral, cheated to get into Boston Marathon.  To view my original block click here.  You might ask why does it matter, the race director of Via marathon cleared him right? Well, actually no.  Rossi has not been cleared of anything. Via released a statement saying the following:
“...while there is data from Rossi’s participation in other racing events indicating that Rossi’s time may not be accurate, there is not conclusive evidence that his time in the 2014 LVHN Via Marathon is inaccurate.... Rossi will not be disqualified unless additional conclusive information arises in the future."
He wasn't cleared, there just isn't enough evidence at this time to say without a reasonable doubt that he did cheat in the review panels opinion.   Interestingly, rather than cause people to give up investigating it's kind of become a siren call for people to keep kicking over the stones in hope of finding that key piece of evidence that Via would need.  No fat lady has sung yet and it doesn't look like any steam has been lost by the lack of a disqualification on Rossi' part.  

One interesting piece of evidence to come out of it is the analysis of a group of photos on the course when the runners cross a bridge.  Forum member concernedBQer put all these photos together in a gif file in order to analyse whether it would be easy for the photographer to miss someone at the point.  The images where checked for the top 200 finishers and graphics were added to show each of them, as they pass the photographer their number turns green.  199 runners were identified, only Mr Rossi was absent.  Each image shows the reference number and time stamp.  The gif has been transfered into a video on youtube by Tony Rigdon who has given me permission to share it here.  Draw from it any conclusion that you wish but a finish time of 3:11 would place Rossi somewhere in the middle of this group.



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