Bashir Abdi did not break the Belgian half-marathon record in Ghent on March 8 after all. World Athletics confirmed this week that the timing point used during the Bashir’s Run sat about 200 meters short of the actual finish line, and every result from the race has been adjusted to match the time recorded under the finish arch, the specialist site Belgium Running first reported on Wednesday.
Abdi crossed the line believing he had taken his own Belgian record down from 59:51 to 59:28. His corrected time is 1:00:06, which still ranks as the second-fastest half-marathon of his career. The 59:51 he ran on the same course in 2023 returns to the top of the Belgian record list.
The race doubled as the Belgian Half Marathon Championship, and the times posted on March 8 had quickly drawn suspicion. Every athlete in the top 10 of both the men’s and women’s races finished with a personal best. Several runners told organizers their splits made no sense.
“The finish line was in the correct place, and all the times recorded there are accurate,” event organizer Bert Misplon told the Belgian daily Le Soir. “However, at the jury’s request, another time was recorded at the stadium entrance, two hundred meters before the finish line, and that was the one initially reported, creating considerable confusion among the athletes, the vast majority of whom had beaten their personal bests, which was rather unusual.”
How the Wrong Time Got Recorded
Doubts about the course distance arose in the days leading up to the race. On the morning of March 8, organizers were told to shift the finish line roughly 200 meters, from the end of a turn to the entrance of the athletics track. A timing mat stayed under the original finish arch as a precaution, but the times announced afterward came from the earlier mat.
That created what the organizers later described as “the surreal scenario of a finish line arch located after the final timing had been recorded.” Runners walked through a finish line that no clock was reading. The times that appeared on screens shaved roughly 30 to 45 seconds off what most athletes were actually capable of running.
To settle the matter, Belgian Athletics, World Athletics and the organizers commissioned an independent remeasurement of the course. The job went to a measurer who has handled the London Marathon and the Paris Olympic marathon course. The result confirmed what the organizers had initially marked: the original finish arch sat at the correct 21.0975-kilometer point. The times from the mat 200 meters short were thrown out.
“We therefore requested that the course be measured again, and World Athletics decided that the time under the finish arch should be the one recorded, and all the times have been adjusted,” Misplon said.
Frustration and a Lesson for Next Year
For Abdi, the outcome is mixed. He keeps his national record, which still sits among the fastest half-marathons ever run by a European, and he adds another sub-1:00:30 performance to his record. But it also erases what he believed was a clean 59:28, a mark he held for less than three months.
Other athletes have lost personal bests they thought were locked in. Race organizers acknowledged the impact in a statement published by Belgium Running on Wednesday.
“We understand that the doubts raised and the delayed confirmation of the official times have been a source of frustration for the athletes, supporters, and everyone involved,” the organizers said. “We want to emphasize that we, too, deeply regret this.”
Misplon, in comments to Belgium Running, said he had been left questioning how the situation got so tangled. “As organizers, we definitely didn’t want a situation like this. We want something official and clear for the athletes, who have always been at the center of the Bashir’s Run. I also wondered how it was possible to get to such a situation.”
The 5-kilometer and 10-kilometer races held the same morning were unaffected. The organizers said they will consolidate timing and measurement under a single process going forward, so the finish arch and the timing mat sit in the same place from the start. As Misplon put it, “in the coming years, we will certainly measure everything in a single step.”
For runners chasing their own goals, the half-marathon distance is unforgiving enough without 200 meters of phantom road. Athletes who set what they thought were personal bests in Ghent will now have to look for them again somewhere else.
0 Comments