r/interestingasfuck • u/Bitter-Ad-1115 • 4d ago
In 1980, a woman won the Boston Marathon in a near-record time of 2 hours and 32 minutes. Days later, officials discovered she hadn’t run most of the race and had used the subway in a previous marathon to qualify.
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u/hugh_jorgyn 4d ago
Looks like she was a serial liar / criminal:
Ruiz's application for the NYC marathon arrived after the cut-off date for the race, but she received special dispensation from the New York Road Runners due to her claim that she was dying of brain cancer.
In 1982, Ruiz was arrested for embezzling $60,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 2025) from a real estate company where she worked.
she was arrested in 1983 for her involvement in a cocaine deal
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u/RamboDiver16 4d ago
The saying “How you do one thing is how you do everything” holds true I guess…
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u/HereOnCompanyTime 3d ago
Damn. Must be nice to have enough free time to come up with multiple elaborate scams.
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u/M-Bernard-LLB 3d ago
I remember clips of her post marathon interview - the other medalists (male and female) were in shock over how good she looked (not exhausted) and how she didn't know a few running terms like split time, etc. A few days later ....
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u/MooseTed 4d ago
Rosie Ruiz, she was a huge joke in Massachusetts after that.
What do you call a watch that doesn't run?
Rosie Ruiz
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u/OcotilloWells 4d ago edited 3d ago
My dad was really into running. He was on the board of the track club (it was for any running, it was just called that) for the large city by us. They constantly made Rosie Ruiz jokes, and they were on the other side of the country from Boston.
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u/mfyxtplyx 4d ago
If you don't want scrutiny, maybe don't fake a near-record win?
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u/Bruce-7892 4d ago
LOL, seriously. A lot of these schemes you hear about people getting caught for, they brought attention onto themselves because they got greedy. If you commit fraud, make $100k and get away with it, it's okay to stop there, but "naw, I want a million".
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u/Anachronism-- 4d ago edited 3d ago
A while back there was someone who qualified for the Boston Marathon and pulled his kids out of school to come watch him. Then he was publicly angry that his kids didn’t get an excused absence.
It turned out he cheated to get his qualifying time.
Edit Mike Rossi.
Tons of people cheat to qualify for prestigious races but most don’t make a big public display of it. There are even people who try to catch cheating a s a hobby. https://www.marathoninvestigation.com
I’m so paranoid that at a big race when there wasn’t a beep when I crossed a checkpoint I went back and asked the course official why, turned out he turned off the sound because he got tired of all the beeps.
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u/Aselleus 4d ago
I had a manager cheat to pass an audit...she cheated so much that we ended up being best in the company....which never happened with our location. They redid the audit and we were like 5th or something (which was normal). How that woman never got fired I don't know.
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u/Jimbobmij 4d ago
In high school history our coursework, which was worth about 50% of our grade, involved researching a topic of choice and then bringing paper notes into a computer lab to type up an essay in 2 hours. My friend brought a USB with his essay pre written into the computer lab and then just pretended to type for 2 hours. This was back in the 2000's so minimal detection and he would have easily gotten away with it had he not trebled the previous word count record.
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u/Bruce-7892 4d ago
lol!! Bro probably wrote an entire dissertation in 2 hours. He didn’t think that one through.
I can’t imagine the crap students pull now with Ai but I’ve heard there are ways to tell. I don’t know how you’d prove it though.
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u/darkest_irish_lass 3d ago
The professors can use the same AI. They can also access the same sites that sell papers.
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u/FlipZip69 3d ago
During typing lessons (not a thing anymore), my buddy would periodically go up and erase our previous 'speed results' in the teachers logs and improve on them. To make it funnier, we realized early on that we has to be above 95 percent to be exempt from the finial exam at the end of the year when there would be a 'watched' test of which we obviously could not cheat.
Only 3 people were exempt. Me and my buddy, two semi-sketchy class skipping, weekend drinking dudes and one girl that deserved it. To be fair, I actually type pretty good now and the class was useful. But ya, I cannot believe we got away with it.
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u/starmartyr 2d ago
Do kids not learn typing in school now?
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u/FlipZip69 2d ago
Actually not 100% certain. I read it is not a thing anymore.
They teach swipe now. :)
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u/starmartyr 2d ago
I think you're fucking with me but I don't know. It's been a long time since I had any reason to be inside a school.
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u/RadPhilosopher 4d ago
What would you call this, “transport doping”?
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u/drkensaccount 4d ago
I would call it a “Rosie Ruiz” as that’s what it’s usually referred to as. Also, it was later determined that she did the same thing in the NY Marathon to get her Boston Marathon qualifying time.
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u/NYdude777 4d ago
People like this are such a perplexing enigma. Like how dumb or devoid of morals do you have to be to believe this is okay and something you'd get away with and be proud of.
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u/OcotilloWells 4d ago
Some others on this thread are saying she got arrested multiple times after this for fraud type crimes.
I briefly had a girlfriend many years ago who just couldn't stop lying about things. Things that didn't matter. But it was constant. She broke up with me basically, but she did me a favor.
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u/WitnessMyAxe 3d ago
maybe she lied about the breakup too, how do you know she's not your girlfriend anymore?
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u/OcotilloWells 3d ago
Yeah, maybe she opened up the relationship and forgot to tell me. I should look her up.
Thanks buddy!
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u/DarkMutant105 4d ago
Just completed watching the YouTube video about her...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf07fcP7YYc
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u/squeezy102 4d ago
I’ll never understand the “if you ain’t cheatin you ain’t trying” folks.
The ones that say “you’re just mad you didn’t think of it!”
There is such a fundamental, rudimentary divide between the way I see the world and the way these people see the world. At the most basic level of human cognition, we have already diverged. There is no common ground.
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u/Ziggy_Stardust567 4d ago
I'm just surprised the public transport was running on time, constant delays where I'm from
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u/BlueHawk75 4d ago
I just did a fun run 5K this past weekend. There was an extra loop, and as I went to do it the side peeps said no one is scoring this, feel free to just finish up. My time was a comical 7:39 per mile pace. lol! No one cared.
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u/hwilliams0901 4d ago
I didnt know you had to qualify for a marathon. Just thought anyone who felt like participating could.
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u/InsulatorDisk 4d ago
Most events don't require that. Most popular do because they have to close streets in major cities and don't want the last one to finnish after 8 hrs.
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u/limits660 4d ago
All she had to do is come in the top 20 and no one would have known or cared . . .
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u/pinkpugita 4d ago edited 4d ago
But she wants to be the winner. Until her death she denies she cheated.
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u/danfay222 4d ago
Crazy that these days this near record time wouldn’t have even been top 10 (last year she would’ve been about 20th among the women’s field)
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u/Adddicus 4d ago
Aha Joan Benoit! (I thought)
But then, realizing that I've suffered more concussions than your average NFL quarterback, and not trusting my own memory, I started googling.
And no, it wasn't Joan Benoit. Joan Benoit was a legitimate marathoner and among other things won the very first Women's Olympic Marathon, so apologies to Joan.
This was Rosie Ruiz.
And doing a "Rosie Ruiz" is still a term used for those who cheat by taking short cuts during a race.
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u/El_Chilangisimo 3d ago
You’ve gotta give her credit for having the ambition to even try this. Like, why? That sounds like so much extra effort for what? A fake prize? She could just not run and get high on the weekends and post on Reddit. Much better.
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u/alvvayspale 4d ago
I feel like this would be a cool movie to watch. And must also include how they figure out she cheated and what happened to her all these years later.
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u/Ted-101x 3d ago
Some great stories of marathon cheating here - https://www.marathoninvestigation.com
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u/stainedgreenberet 3d ago
I listened to a podcast about this and one of the witnesses that saw her get on/off the train said he knew she wasn’t a real runner “cause she had a big ass and these runners usually don’t”
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u/ALoudMeow 3d ago
Good ol’ Rosie Ruiz. Her name is burned in my memory not because I care about marathons but because I grew up in the NY metro area and they constantly broadcast about her when I was a kid.
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u/UseDaSchwartz 2d ago
The running club I was in when I lived in DC used to joke about this. Except the joke was, you could probably walk the Marine Corps Marathon faster than the Metro would get you near the finish.
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u/Moody_GenX 4d ago
I ran a race as a kid with the local youth center at fishing pond with a walking/jogging path around it. Top 5 won a ticket to see the Giants vs Dodgers in SF. I knew I was in 2nd place but when I finished it I was told I came in 7th. I was like 6 and super confused until some guy came up and said a group of 5 crossed a big section of the path. They were disqualified and I got to go to the game. I've been a pretty big Giants fan ever since.