Richmond Marathon “America’s friendliest “… until you cheat their prize purse

The Richmond Marathon may have a reputation for being “America’s friendliest marathon”… except for three runners who showed up at this year’s event. 

According to Richmond Times Dispatch, three of this year’s athletes were handed a DQ and had their results wiped. That included the winner of the men’s race, Julius Koskei, and the first and third women in the half-marathon: Firegenet Mandefiro and Gadise Megersa. The reason for their being disqualified is that they had ties to a banned coach who has some serious allegations attached to her name. 

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Their agent is Larisa Mikhaylova who last year turned the heads of both U.S. anti-doping and the IAAF itself. In the past, she has had all kinds of doping allegations listed next to her name. Officials looked into her and her group of athletes based out of Kentucky and found that she has a system of administering banned substances to her runners and registering them for races small enough to not bother with drug testing but large enough to offer decent prize money to top finishers. The runners have an incredible success rate raking in the dollars from events in the United States and Mexico. Mikhaylova, of course, makes money off of every single win. 

This race in particular, hosted by Sports Backers, also does not test its athletes and hands over cheques with a $2,500 dollar figure for first place, $1,500 for second and $750 for third.

In 2016, one athlete of hers who won $24,000 by racing across the U.S. detailed Mikhaylova’s program saying she provided “vitamins” to the athletes and had them race as much as possible to maximize winnings taking a 15 per cent cut. That total prize purse happens to be a lot larger than a salary that particular athlete would have earned at home. 

Now, since Mikhaylova’s name has these worrisome allegations attached to it, she decided to use a fake one. That’s right, the agent was discovered to have used an alias when entering her athletes to run the Richmond marathon and half. When Sports Backers got wind of the potential scheme, they looked into it and were able to confirm her participation in getting her athletes to the start line. 

The athletes were disqualified after the marathon’s event committee investigated them and proved not only their connection to this agent, but their attempts at covering it up. 

Koskei himself has won six times in the 13 races he has run this year. Of those, he has never finished farther back than fifth places so that means that he has taken some prize dollars even when he wasn’t first across the line. He has won 19 races since April 2015 winning sums of money for both himself and Mikhaylova at each of these. 

For running under 2:20 (he ran 2:19.44) he would have been awarded another $500. 

Sports Backers took over the event in 1998 and according to an official there, it’s the first time any of the race’s top runners have been disqualified in the window of nearly 20 years. 

The rules of the race clearly state that athletes cannot be entered if they train or work with “coaches and/or agents who have had two or more athletes suspended or banned for the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the previous four years.” 

As a result of the disqualifications, Temesgen Habtemariam of Ethiopia was declared the men’s marathon winner and Nicole DiMercurio was declared the women’s half marathon winner.