The Viral Runner Who High-Fived Ariana Grande at the NYC Marathon Wore a Fake Bib

When Nicolas Bourot looked through his race photos from the Nov. 1 New York City Marathon, some of the pictures filed under his name showed a different man wearing his number. Bourot, the chief security officer at the French banking group Groupe BPCE, had run on bib 4207 and finished in 3:23:23. The man in the other photos was Mike Clarke, a content creator who had made his own copy of that bib, run the whole course by his own account without ever registering, and posted a clip of himself high-fiving Ariana Grande near the finish that went viral.

New York Road Runners has banned Clarke from next year’s race after receiving multiple reports about the counterfeit bib, the New York Post reported on Wednesday. “When individuals fraudulently enter our events, they jeopardize everyone’s safety,” an NYRR spokesperson told the paper. “These acts are egregious and are antithetical to supporting the sport of running and its community.”

Clarke admitted in a YouTube video, since deleted, that he had not been officially registered. He told the Post he chose 4207 in memory of a friend who had died, and that he did not know it belonged to a banking executive. “My friend who passed wanted to run all the world majors and was hoping to do New York in 2028,” he said. He offered no apology, describing the run as a way “to push my limits,” and said he gave the finisher’s medal he collected to a child.

Bourot waited 10 years for an entry, had already run 10 marathons, and came to New York on plane tickets and hotel stays paid for by his wife and friends, a present for his own 50th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the race’s five-borough course. “It’s not fair for all the runners because it’s very hard to get entrance to this marathon,” he told the Post. “I waited for 10 years before I was able to.”

More than 240,000 people applied to the drawing for the 2026 race, and only about 1% of them were accepted, the lowest rate in its history. A record 61,146 runners finished, and Bourot’s result was one of them, unaffected by the second 4207 on the course.

Before the race, NYRR representatives told the Post that the organization had not put people on the course specifically to catch unregistered runners for several years, and relied on screening at the start instead. Clarke says his homemade number carried him past it and all 26.2 miles. What gave him away was the race photo gallery, which matched his pictures to the number on his chest and put them under Bourot’s name. The same kind of mismatch exposed a Chinese influencer last year who wore a duplicated bib at the national half-marathon championships and was banned from that race for life.

Matt Choi finished the 2024 race in 2:57:15 and was then disqualified and banned from future NYRR races after two people on e-bikes followed him around the course with a camera. Last year, Marathon Investigation documented a TikToker who walked into the finish area without credentials, took a medal and posted the videos, the first of which drew nearly 200,000 views. Clarke makes it three years in a row that someone filming for social media has ended up on the wrong side of NYRR at this race. His high-five came on the same day Grande wrote a note for a finisher she had never met.

Bourot, a member of the Paris club SAM Paris 12, has his time and his photos, a few of them now with a stranger in his place. “I ran 10 marathons before, but none is like New York,” he said. “It’s a very, very special event.”