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Organisatie in de fout

The Ottawa Hospital earned more than half a million from Ottawas race weekend. Other medical charities from breast cancer on down the list earned nicely. Everybody won, in fact, except the top marathoners.

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These happen to be guys (and some women) who traveled from Africa to Canada because their best chance to support their families is by running long distances for money. And in Ottawa, in the annual marathon we like to brag about, organizers got careless and let the elite runners, the ones out in front, take a wrong turn. In one version of the explanation, some idiot car driver moved the barrier marking the route, so he could get his car past it. Careless race officials failed to notice. Its telling, however, that even this much isnt known for sure.Whatever the reasons, the front runners took a wrong turn, missed a few hundred metres, and were disqualified.Mind you, the race organizers let them run the full distance before telling them. My wife and I stood at the 37-km mark, beside Dows Lake, watching these incredible athletes giving every ounce of strength to the task. Its an inspiring sight, except to the race organizers who threw them out, after they crossed the finish line.

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What were the runners supposed to do – consult a map? Stop and ask a traffic cop for directions? Even at Dows Lake, nearly 30 km after the fatal wrong turn, we were stunned to watch the lackadaisical approach to traffic control. Sunday morning cyclists were cruising up and down the road in the runners path. Amazing. Fire the organizers, I said at first – perhaps unfairly, as a member of the race organizing committee has firmly told me. He argues they did a good job by driving elite racers around the course in advance, having a lead vehicle, and painting a blue line along the full course as a last resort.In all, he argues, there was good organization, and experienced runners should know as soon as theyre off course, and should then retrace their steps. Maybe. It still seems odd to me that so many went off course at the same point. More than odd: unfair. If firing isnt in order, at the very least an energetic shakeup of the procedure for marking the course seems necessary. And the wrong-way runners still deserve serious prize money.

© Ottawa Citizen