Yes, he cheated, but that doesn't give people the right to be jerks. There might have been an underlying issue that made him do what he did.
All of this came to mind over the weekend, when I read the sad story of Dr. Frank Meza—an amateur runner from California who was accused of cheating and hounded for it online. In June, Meza told the Los Angeles Times that the allegations were “pretty traumatic,” and that he was “shocked” when he discovered that there were hundreds of derogatory posts about him on the Letsrun message boards.
Late last week, according to the L.A. County medical examiner’s office, Meza took his own life.
To recap: Meza, 70, was a late bloomer on the marathoning scene. A lifelong runner, he only started competing in marathons in his 60s, but the distance seemed to suit him. In just a few years, he managed to improve his time from 3:19 to under three hours. Then, earlier this year, Meza ran 2:53:54 at the Sprouts Mesa-PHX Marathon in February and 2:53:10 at the Los Angeles Marathon in March. Both of these times are faster than the official world record for the 70-74 age group, which stands at 2:54:48, set by the late Ed Whitlock in 2004.
Unsurprisingly, these impressive results garnered Meza a significant amount of attention, which soon morphed into skepticism as the validity of his results was called into question. Meza had already been retroactively disqualified from both the 2014 and 2016 California International Marathons on the basis of suspiciously erratic splits and the fact that he appeared in few race photographs. (He was banned from the race after the second disqualification.)
Tragic stuff. People should leave other people alone.
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An arrest has been made of a woman who is accused of killing her husband 35 years ago.
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Obituary: Veteran actor Rip Torn (Torn was his real last name, the "Rip" was the childhood nickname of Elmore Rual, Jr.), 88, has died. He had won an Emmy award for his role in The Larry Sanders Show.
Torn was a familiar face for many years.
He attended college in Texas, then enlisted in the military during the Korean War. Torn originally thought he would be a rancher but then decided to hitchhike to Hollywood, where he worked odd jobs and landed minor parts. His first break came after studying acting in New York, when he landed roles on the live TV shows Omnibus and Playhouse 90._____
When asked in 1994 on NPR's Weekend Edition what he likes most about his role as Artie on The Larry Sanders Show, Torn said it had to be Garry Shandling. But the second best thing? The paycheck.
"I don't mind the money. I paid off people who thought I'd forgotten them," Torn said. "I am not looking around for bill collectors. I'm not, as my father used to say for many years, 'What's Rip doing up there?' He said, 'Treading water.' "
2 comments:
If the man did not cheat, then what a horrible end.
If he did cheat, it was not a victimless act. The story goes that he refused to have an escort run with him so that his times would be easily verifiable.
If he cheated, if really disgusts me because it seemed to be so endemic to who he was or needed to be. But it's not a victimless crime. The other runners move down a peg and someone who should have been honored for their effort instead finished out of the running.
I wish we knew more about his numbers. How good was he actually? I think before he was labeled a cheater the actual mile by mile times should have been published so that the public could decide, because the public ended up deciding anyways.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether he cheated. The issue is the fact he killed himself, and at least one cause was the relentless online bullying. There is a website that devoted tons of space to Meza in recent weeks: https://www.marathoninvestigation.com/
If he cheated, this could have been handled in a different way behind the scenes and not be made a public spectacle of shaming this man.
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