Rosie Ruiz

You probably have never heard of this name before. I certainly didn’t until I came across it today some where. She is the lady that ALMOST became the first woman to win the Boston Marathon in 1980. Well, almost. She had cheated in the most amazing way. She joined the 26 mile race in the last half-mile! You know what I mean? She was standing in the crowd and just jumped in to join the race! She had registered for the race earlier. All she had to do was just jump in and join at the end. The reason she was caught was that she wasn’t sweating at all and the organizers thought that was strange. Which is when some of the people in the crowd stepped up to tell the truth. What a funny story.

Wait, it doesn’t end there. To qualify for the Boston Marathon, you need to have bettered some kind of a mark previously in a marathon. Rosie did that in the NY marathon. Later, it was found that she had cheated in the NY race too; in an even more remarkable way. She took the subway to cover most of the race and then joined towards the end!!!!

Imagine if she had bothered to spill some water on her before she joined the race. No one would have ever suspected that she cheated and we would have never heard this wonderful story! Which makes me wonder how many such cheaters have won and not been caught. And how many of them have gone on to write books that have inspired us?