An accomplished ultramarathon runner from Australia was stripped of her bronze medal and trophy wins in a recent 50-mile race. This was after the organizers discovered that 47-year-old Joasia Zakrzewski had used a car for a portion of the race course.
Zakrzewski finished third in the 2023 GB Ultras 50-mile (80km) race from Manchester to Liverpool on April 7. She had broken the rules of the competition and had used a friend’s car during a small portion of the course. She had even posed with her medal and the trophy after crossing the finishing line.
Analysis of the GPX data showed the race organizers that Zakrzewski had reached a speed of 35mph (56km/h) during a short section of the race, which impressively made her faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest human in history. Upon inquiry from the race staff, some witnesses, and then eventually the runner herself, Joasia Zakrzewski was disqualified from the race.
The athlete later told BBC Scotland that after flying from Australia, the night before the race, she started feeling great discomfort and distress. She claimed she felt sick and jetlagged but took part in the race anyways due to which she felt serious pain in one of her legs halfway around the track. She decided to quit the race and accepted a ride in a friend’s car to a race checkpoint to inform staff that she was dropping out.
“When I got to the checkpoint I told them I was pulling out and that I had been in the car, and they said ‘you will hate yourself if you stop’,” Zakrzewski told the BBC. “I agreed to carry on in a non-competitive way. I made sure I didn’t overtake the runner in front when I saw her as I didn’t want to interfere with her race.”
She does however admit that she has made a mistake accepting the medal and the trophy and then eventually posing for the photos. She claims that she wasn’t thinking clearly at the time because she was tired and unwell. The athlete has apologized to the runner who should have been rightly in her place and has returned the medal and the trophy.
“Great news for me but really bad news for sportsmanship,” said Mel Sykes, who received Zakrzewski’s medal. “The below happened because a fellow competitor cheated. After an investigation, she has now been DQ’d, and rightly so. How can someone who knows they have cheated cross a finish line, collect a medal/trophy, and have their photos taken!”
The question in Zakrzewski’s explanation is that even if the mistake was made, why did she not admit it herself but instead waited to be contacted by the organizers after analyzing her GPX data?
This incident has shocked the internet and all her fans as she is a very accomplished athlete with many accomplishments one of them taking place only a few weeks ago, as she set a new world record for the most miles run by a woman in 48 hours.