Kendall Schler: Winner of GO! St. Louis Marathon 2015 Disqualified because She Never Ran! (Photo : REUTERS/Benoit Tessier)
More than 72 hours after the women's GO! St. Louis Marathon 2015, the organizers of the competition have been forced to disqualify a 26-year-old competitor, who was the first to cross the finish line.
According to the president of GO! St. Louis, Nancy Lieberman, Kendall Schler, who took photos with Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee after she was initially adjudged to have won the race, may have never actually ran the course.
Officials say Schler's victory was called into question about 20 minutes after she crossed the finish line when they failed to find her number in any of the electronic tracking stations along the race route. She also arrived at the finish line without any lead bicycle. Schler, who had placed her bib on her leg, claimed to have tampered with the timing strip on her bib.
But officials subsequently failed to find her in any photos of the runners on the course and no one could confirm to have seen her during the race. Schler was later disqualified after she failed to provide any evidence that she had actually taken part in the competition.
According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lieberman suspects that she must have slipped onto the course somewhere near the finish line. Reports indicate that Schler finished third place in the competition last year and officials suspect that she pulled the same trick.
"It's a difficult situation for everybody, including the people who run a fair race and don't get the recognition they should receive," she said.
After disqualifying Schler, the organizers of the GO! St. Louis Marathon 2015 have revealed that the winner of the race is Andrea Karl, a student at Washington University, KSDK reports. Karl, who received little attention when she crossed the finish line, completed the race in 2:54:28. She is set to receive the prize money of $1,500 for winning the race.
Meanwhile, Schler, who has also been stripped of her third-place victory at the GO! St. Louis Marathon last year, has further been banned from competing at the Boston Marathon next week and other events organized by GO! St.Louis.
