Camille Herron, a prominent American ultrarunner with numerous world records, recently came under fire for allegedly altering Wikipedia entries.
The allegations stem from edits made to the profiles of top ultrarunners like Kilian Jornet and Courtney Dauwalter. Edits made by Herron’s account reduced the prominence of her competitors’ achievements and removed several accolades while elevating her own accomplishments. These edits have been connected to Herron’s email address and her husband and coach Conor Holt’s IP address.
The account responsible for the edits has been using the Wikipedia handle “Rundbowie” since February 2024, after their previous account, “Temporun73,” was suspended for violating Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest policies. Once “Rundbowie” was active, the pattern of edits resumed, promoting Herron while altering the profiles of other notable athletes.
The earlier account, “Temporun73,” was flagged multiple times for making promotional edits to Herron’s own page. Wikipedia administrators issued warnings, emphasizing the importance of maintaining neutrality and disclosing conflicts of interest. Herron’s account ignored these warnings, dismissing them as “abusive talk.”
This morning, LetsRun.com moderators revealed on its messageboard that they had received an email from Holt, taking full responsibility for the edits.
“We received the following email from Conor Holt, the husband of Camille Herron, surrounding the Wikipedia edits controversy outlined by Canadian Running yesterday. Here is the email:
Hello from Greece- here for the Spartathlon 153 mile race scheduled for this Saturday.
Yesterday I received a notification about a published article by Canadian Running Magazine.
The author said he reached out for comment before it was published. I found an email sent Sept 20 in my spam account yesterday after the article was published! I never got a chance to say anything to the Canadian Running website before they published it. Plus we have been traveling the last few days with limited access!
For the Wikipedia part, temporun73 was the original account I created in 2016 and use to edit the page. I manage this so Camille can focus on her running and recovery.
Starting in 2023 and continuing to this day, cyber bullies by the name of Steven Walling, Liliana Uwu, C.Fred, Melcous, and some more were repeatedly editing out significant parts of Camille’s life/ biographical details.
I kept adding back in the details, and then they blocked my account in early February of this year. Nothing was out of line with what other athletes have on their pages. Wikipedia allows the creation of another account, so I created a new account Rundbowie. I was going off what other athletes had on their pages using the username Rundbowie and copying/pasting this info.
Camille had nothing to do with this.
I am 100% responsible and apologize for any athletes affected by this and the wrong I did.
I was only trying to protect Camille from the constant bullying, harassment and accusations she has endured in her running career, which has severely impacted her mental health. So much to the point that she has sought professional mental health help.
I also went ahead and deactivated all of Camille’s social platforms for the time being because of the vile comments she has received.
I appreciate you reaching out to me.
Conor Holt”
While Holt is taking responsibility for the Wikipedia edits, he claims his actions were to protect Herron from cyberbullies, an excuse the LetsRun community hasn’t been buying so far.
Since the accusations went viral, Herron has since deleted or hidden her social media accounts, including X and Instagram.
