The 2025 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon was supposed to be a straightforward day of sweat, sore legs, and personal bests.
Instead, it turned into a spectacle of swapped bibs, suspiciously fast finish times, and runners competing in the wrong gender categories. Somewhere between the starting gun and the finish line, things went sideways—badly.
By the time the dust settled, multiple athletes had been disqualified, race officials were left red-faced, and the internet was having a field day dissecting the chaos.
Was it a comedy of errors or a brazen attempt at cheating? Maybe a little of both.
Elite Runners Disqualified in Bib-Swapping Scandal
Shortly after the race wrapped up on Feb. 9, 2025, the news broke: four mainland Chinese runners had been disqualified for wearing incorrect bibs.
Among them were He Yingbing and Sun Xiaoyang, who had initially finished first and second in the half-marathon with impressive times of 1:05:36 and 1:06:11.
Not far behind, another runner who crossed the line as the runner-up in the 10K race was also found to be competing under the wrong bib, belonging to Lan Jiehuai.
Cue the disqualifications and the collective groan from spectators.
The mix-up was blamed on an agent who apparently couldn’t keep track of which bibs belonged to which runners.
Whether this was an innocent clerical error or a poorly executed ploy remains debatable, but the result was the same: four disqualified runners, lost prize money, and a whole lot of online chatter about how a professional race could get this messy.
Officials were quick to point out that, intentional or not, bib-swapping is strictly against the rules, and runners are responsible for making sure they’re wearing their own number.
The Male Runner in the Women’s Division
As if that weren’t enough, another eyebrow-raising moment surfaced when social media users pointed out that a particularly muscular “female” runner had completed the race in the Women’s Master 3 category (ages 45-49).
The bib, numbered 33150, was registered to a woman named Cao Youxuan, who supposedly finished the marathon in 3:18:55, securing a solid placement.
The only problem? The person crossing the finish line with that bib was very clearly a man.
Marathon bibs in Hong Kong are color-coded—black for men, red for women—so this wasn’t exactly a subtle mistake.
The internet wasted no time in highlighting the absurdity of the situation, with theories ranging from a last-minute substitution to an attempt at gaming the system for category-specific prizes.
Regardless of the motivation, the evidence was undeniable, and the runner was disqualified.
Why Do Runners Swap Bibs?
Bib-swapping isn’t just a Hong Kong problem—it’s a global headache for race organizers.
Some runners do it to qualify for future marathons with faster times, while others are more interested in snagging cash prizes.
Then there are those who simply miss the registration deadline and buy a bib off someone else, often underestimating just how strict race rules can be.
This kind of behavior isn’t new.
The Boston Marathon has had its fair share of imposters, including cases where runners paid “bib mules” to run on their behalf.
The London Marathon disqualified over 20 runners in 2018 for similar offenses.
Race directors everywhere are trying to clamp down on bib fraud, but as this year’s Hong Kong Marathon showed, people are still willing to push their luck.
Race Organizers’ Response
Unsurprisingly, the Hong Kong Marathon organizers weren’t thrilled.
The Hong Kong China Association of Athletics Affiliates (HKAAA) was quick to disqualify the guilty runners, clearing their results from the leaderboard, and issuing a firm reminder that bib-swapping would not be tolerated.
There’s even talk of barring some of these runners from future events.
An HKAAA spokesperson emphasized that wearing someone else’s bib—or letting someone else wear yours—is a direct violation of the rules and could result in lifetime bans.
They urged runners to double-check their bib details before stepping up to the starting line, although one might argue that wearing a bib that actually belongs to you shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.
Can Technology Prevent Bib Swapping?
As ridiculous as some of these cases are, marathon organizers around the world are trying to stop them from happening in the first place.
RFID timing chips in bibs help track runners, but they don’t verify identity.
Facial recognition technology, which has already been tested in marathons in Beijing and Tokyo, could be a game-changer, though it raises its own concerns about privacy.
Meanwhile, some races, like the New York City Marathon, manually cross-check finish line photos with registration details to weed out cheaters.
Stricter bib pick-up policies—like requiring government-issued IDs and biometric verification—could also help, but that would make race logistics more complicated.
For now, organizers are stuck playing whack-a-mole with increasingly creative rule-breakers.
