Run to Win

Last month, Arien O’Connell ran the fastest time but didn’t win in the Nike Women’s Marathon due to Nike unnecessarily starting a non-elite group of “elite” women 20 minutes early in the race. After a firestorm by runners throughout the country, Nike awarded her an equal prize as “a” winner. In my opinion, this is fair as it recognized her accomplishments while not taking anything away from the actual winner of the race.

Yesterday morning, however, O’Connell was in for a surprise. Reebok, one of Nike’s chief rivals in the shoe and apparel industry, surprised O’Connell at the elementary school she teaches at with an award ceremony to recognize her accomplishments.

Reebok awarded her a free pair of shoes every month for the next year, a $2500 donation to her school along with a t-shirt for all of the kids in her class, and a trophy inscribed “Winner and Heroine of Non-Elite Runners Everywhere.”

This is a great move by Reebok, and amuses me to no end. It is prolonging Nike’s embarrassment at poorly executed race management, and fosters a lot of good will amongst the running population. And I have to imagine that O’Connell is pretty happy at having won over $1000 worth of running shoes.

(Hat Tip: Shéamus – More Info: San Francisco Chronicle – Photo Credit: Reebok)

Last night, I explained my reasons why I think that Ariel O’Connell did not win the Nike Women’s Marathon this past weekend. After all, she wasn’t the first to cross the finish line.

Thanks to a thoughtful reader, though, it appears as though Nike might be changing their minds. Here’s the reply he received through their help desk system:

Hello,

Nike is announcing today that it recognizes Arien O’Connell as a winner in last weekend’s Nike Women’s Marathon with the fastest chip time, completing the full race in 2:55:11. She shattered her previous time and achieved an amazing accomplishment.

Arien will receive the same recognition and prize, including a Tiffany bowl, the full marathon elite group winner received. Arien was unfortunately not immediately recognized as a race winner because she did not start the race with the elite running group, which is required by USATF standards. Because of their earlier start time, the runners in the elite group had no knowledge of the outstanding race Arien was running and could not adjust their strategies accordingly.

Learning from the unique experience in this year’s race, Nike has decided today to eliminate the elite running group from future Nike Women’s Marathons. Next year, all runners will run in the same group and all will be eligible to win.

Nike has a proven track record of supporting athletes and we’re proud to be able to honor Arien and other athletes who surpass their goals and achieve great accomplishments.

Sincerely,
Nike+ / Nike Running

So Nike is going to own up to their not overly well thought out system and change things next year, and will recognize Arien for the great race that she ran this weekend.

They are not going to take away the win from Nora Colligan, since she did in fact win the race, but are going to have a dual prize to recognize that Arien was the first woman to cross the line that started with the main pack.

I’ll update with a link to the press release when (and if) this becomes official.

Update: Still no official word, but there is an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about it that was published about an hour after my article.

Arien O’Connell undeniably ran the fastest time at the Nike Women’s Marathon this past weekend. She had a tremendous race, she ran a 12 minute PR, and now she has a great story to tell her friends.

What Arien did not do, however, was win the race. Just because she ran 11 minutes faster than her next closest competitor, she was not the first woman to cross the finish line. Nora Colligan was.

Should there have been a 20 minute head start for the “elite” women? Probably not. Should some of those “elite” women have signed up as elites? Probably not. Should Arien have signed up as an elite? Questionable.

The fact remains, however, that there was an elite field, that for whatever reason did have a 20 minute head start, and the rules pertain to the first person to cross the line. Nora crossed it 9 minutes before Arien did.

I hope that Nike and the city of San Francisco use this fiasco to improve the management of their race next year, and should they decide to offer some prize money to Arien for her great effort out there on the race course, that would be great. However, they should not take the win away from Nora since she was in fact the one that won the race.

The elite start is a mainstay of large marathons, usually to allow the women a chance to shine and to make it easy for media vehicles to follow them so that they do not get lost in the crowd. However, the Nike race fails to draw an actual elite group of women to race, otherwise they wouldn’t have been beaten to the line despite a 20 minute head start. How the group that starts with the elite women were chosen for this race, I don’t know.

A quick search on a few of the women in the elite field returns recent marathon times ranging from low to high 3 hour races. With nothing to go on other than an elite designation, Arien is nowhere close to being an elite runner, nor are most of the women that started in the elite corral. If Nike isn’t already, they should base their elite corral on the top women with qualifying times rather than whatever flawed system they are currently using.

Better yet, since the race is predominantly run by women with only 15 men in the top 50 finishers this year, they should consider doing away with an elite start 20 minutes ahead of the rest of the field and just let them race it out the normal way. Give the “elite” runners a chance to stretch out and do some striders and then start at the head of the pack, and otherwise let everybody start at the same gun.

No matter how you cut it, though, Arien O’Connell did not win the 2008 Nike Women’s Marathon.

Update: It appears as though Nike is going to award a separate award in a new category to Arien and will get rid of the elite start next year

(More Info & Photo Credits: Full Results – Race Recap – San Francisco Chronicle)