Australian YouTuber Handed Lifetime Ban by Ageo City Half Marathon After Running 1:06 with Another Runner's Bib (updated)
After discussion with their race's chief JAAF referee, on Nov. 27 the organizers of the Ageo City Half Marathon handed down a lifetime ban from their event against 36-year-old Australian Matt Inglis Fox for running the Nov. 15 race wearing the bib number of another JAAF-registered runner. The incident came to light after Fox posted on his personal Instagram account that he had run a PB of 1:06:33 and finished 203rd in Ageo with a 10 km split of 31:03, along with photos and video of himself in the race wearing a bib number beginning with 11. Fox did not appear in the results by name or in that time or place, the closest match being a 1:06:54 gross, 1:06:50 net finish time with a 31:21 10 km split for 18th place in the JAAF-registered division and 209th overall by bib number 1129, registered to a non-Japanese Tokyo-resident club runner. The club runner, Harrisson Uk , readily confirmed that he had given his bib to Fox, saying, "I gave my number to Matt. It wasn't me."...
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As far as the unretirement, Osako announced on July 29, 2021 that he was going to retire after the Olympic marathon, which he ran on Aug. 8, 2021. On Feb. 7, 2022 he announced that he was coming out of retirement. It would probably take a lawyer to determine for sure whether that announcement happened exactly on the last day of a 6-month period following the Olympic marathon, but TV ratings in Japan for the men's marathon were more than double those for the women's marathon and it's safe to say a big part of that was due to Osako saying it was going to be his last race.