11,000 DQs – Mexico City Marathon aka Mexico Cheats’ Marathon
This is a truly remarkable story from last week where 11,000 runners in the Mexico City Marathon were disqualified out of 30,000 starters. That’s 1 in 3 runners if my maths serves correctly.
The organisers are quoted widely as saying
The Mexico City Sports Institute informs that it will proceed to identify those cases in which participants of the XL Mexico City Marathon Telcel 2023 have demonstrated an unsportsmanlike attitude during the event and will invalidate their registration times
Translation; We’ll find the cheats and DQ them.
Consequently, checks were made of all athletes times at every 5km checkpoint. It transpired that mass cheating was probably the explanation and numerous examples of cars, bikes and public transportation being used to skip sections of the course were also reported by members of the public and fellow competitors.
Like me, you are probably searching for something that could more rationally explain this. Perhaps there was poor marshalling and runners were directed the wrong way? Perhaps some of the tech at the checkpoints failed?
Maybe. But bear in mind that the same race in 2017 had 6,000 DQs and a further 3,090 in 2018. It seems that this really is the cheaters’ marathon and I’m sorry that tag then looms over the decent runners who competed the course fairly.
Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Why doesn’t it really surprise me? South America (OK, middle, same thing)
On the other hand: do other organisations do checks? It’s big business isn’t it…..?
Answer 1: it is North America. No. It os not the same thing.
Answer 2: It is big business, and that is the issue. Subscription costs around 40 USD, that means 1200000 USD, plus merchandise, sponsorships, etc.
Cheating may have become a sport in it self over there?
Cheating may have become a sport in it self over there?
I wonder if they had busses lined up to take the runners. 11000 people cheating is pretty amazing. Would be interesting to know if they planned to do that from the beginning or they decided to do it during the run.
The running equivalent to cycling’s sticky bottle? The sticky city bus!