Organisers are investigating a half marathon race in Beijing after three African runners appeared to let China's top long-distance runner move ahead of them shortly before the finish line and sprint to victory, sparking public speculation that the result was rigged. (More Sports News)
There was a flood of public 🌜reaction online expressing suspicion about the race after video from the final🌞 moments of Sunday's Mengniu Beijing Half Marathon circulated online. On Monday, organizers of the race issued a statement saying they would investigate the results.
"The organising committee attaches grea🦋t impo🍨rtance to the issue raised by netizens about the results of the (race)," organisers said.
"A special investigat👍ion team has been set up to conduct an investigation, and the results of the investigation will be released to the public in a timely fashion."
The Beijing Sports Bureau, which was in charge of the r🅘ace, did not respond to a request for comment.
He Jie, who won the marathon at the Asian Games and holds the C꧒hinese national record in the event, was trailing behind three runners from Kenya and Ethiopia as they approached the finish line. One of the runners then seems to gesture for the others to slow down as he moves in front and sprints to the finish line.
One of the other runners, Willy Mnangat of Kenya, told BBC Sport Africa tha⛄t they allowed him to win but that they had been hired to serve as pacemakers and were not competing to win the race. However, all three had entered the race as of🍎ficial competitors rather than as pacemakers.
"I was not there to compete," Mnangat was quoted🧜 as saying.
"My job was to set the paಞce and help the guy win but u💖nfortunately, he did not achieve the target, which was to break the national record."
He finished with a time of 1 hour, 3 minutes, 44 seconds, which was more than a minute slo♊wer than the Chinese half-marathon record.
