1) What is Skyrunning? and
2) How did she cheat?
Skyrunning is an extreme sport of mountain running above 2,000 metres where the incline exceeds 30% and the climbing difficulty does not exceed II° grade. The governing body is the International Skyrunning Federation.
Let me know if you get an answer. I was going to ask the same thing.
What the timing showed, according to John, was that Maude likely ran the first loop legitimately.
At mile 13.8, Maude was 28th out of 52 females. The split mat is in the grove area of the map. By mile 18.1 she had moved up to 19th, and she was 2nd by 29.3 miles.
‘BASED ON HER SPLITS, I BELIEVE SHE DID THE NORTH SECTION CORRECTLY THE FIRST TIME THROUGH, THEN ON THE NEXT TWO LAPS, SHE TURNED AROUND AT THE YURT AID STATION, CUTTING OFF ~6K FROM EACH LOOP, OR ~12K IN TOTAL. THAT WOULD BE FAIRLY CONSISTENT WITH THE PACE SHE RAN IN THE OTHER SECTIONS.”
Her split times showed her running 5 minute miles towards the end of the race. If you go to the link and look at the course map it shows plenty of places where she could jump the route.
Skyrunning is a long distance mountain race.
But I agree, it was flimsy on evidence. Circumstantial. That being said, apparently from yesterday's article, they determined this was done in a few different races.
As far as cheating goes, they need to re-design their race courses so they prevent the type of situation that occurred (basically a cross-over and repeating loops), and/or they need to put checkpoints at certain areas to record the racer and ensure the racer is not cutting things short, and they need to add more officials to watch for suspicious activity.