The top three finishers of the Beijing half marathon earlier this month have had their medals confiscated for deliberately skewing the result, the BBC reports.
It was alleged that the three African athletes deliberately allowed China’s star runner He Jie to win the race last Sunday.
Footage posted on social media appeared to show Kenya’s Robert Keter and Willy Mnangat and Ethiopia’s Dejene Hailu slowing down to allow He to pass and ‘win’ the race.
Organisers of the event investigated and found that none of the three had been officially registered as pacemakers for He, and that their actions had thus breached the competition rules.
[Image: Narnabi, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136751919]