Marathon course-cutting occurs when runners complete less than an entire course of a marathon. The standard length of a marathon course is 42.195 kilometers, about 26.2 miles. Course-cutting may be intentional or unintentional and can be achieved by various means. When done intentionally, course-cutting constitutes cheating.
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Notable incidents
In 1904, Frederick Lorz rode a car during the Olympic marathon in St. Louis.
In October 1979, Rosie Ruiz rode the New York City Subway during the New York City Marathon. She qualified for the Boston Marathon in April 1980, but her medal was later revoked because she had taken the MBTA subway in Boston.
In 2007 Roberto Madrazo, a Mexican presidential candidate in 2006, had his results invalidated in the Berlin Marathon. According to his timing chip, Madrazo skipped two checkpoints on the course and covered one nine-mile segment in 21 minutes (faster than world-record speed for such a distance).
News coverage
In 2006, the Washington Post reported that the seventh and eighth place women’s finishers of the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon were disqualified. Rick Nealis, the race director, disqualified 350 runners in the 2005 race.
In 2009, the New York Times ran an article on course-cutting, including a map of where about 46 runners in the 2008 New York City Marathon left and reentered the course. “An untold number of [course-cutting] runners escape detection, marathon officials said.”
In 2010, the Chicago Tribune reported that in “the 2009 Chicago Marathon, 252 runners' times were disqualified, most for missing two or more timing mats in a row.”
In a 2012 New York Post article, a New York City Marathon official estimated that "each year an average of 30 to 40 are disqualified" from the marathon.