Rosie Ruiz produced one of the most notorious deceptions in marathon history. In 1979, she was credited with completing the New York City Marathon in 2:56:29, a time that placed her 11th among women and qualified her for Boston. Her entry had even received special dispensation after she claimed she was dying of brain cancer. But after her astonishing performance in Boston, the New York result came under scrutiny. Photographer Susan Morrow said she had encountered Ruiz on the subway during the New York race and accompanied her toward the finish, while other evidence suggested Ruiz had entered the course only near the end. New York race officials could find no reliable indication that Ruiz had run the full route and retroactively disqualified her on April 25, 1980.
The Boston deception was even more dramatic. On April 21, 1980, Ruiz was declared the women's winner in 2:31:56—more than 25 minutes faster than her New York time six months earlier and, at the time, the fastest women's mark in Boston history and the third-fastest women's marathon time ever recorded. Her apparent victory immediately raised suspicions: she was not visibly exhausted, could not explain basic racing details such as split times, did not understand a question about interval training, and had a resting heart rate of 76, unusually high for an elite marathoner. Competitors and course observers could not recall seeing her at key checkpoints, she appeared in no race photographs or video, and she failed to mention the famous Wellesley College cheering section. Two Harvard students, John Faulkner and Sola Mahoney, said they saw her emerge from a crowd on Commonwealth Avenue roughly half a mile from the finish. Boston officials investigated independently and stripped Ruiz of the title eight days later, awarding victory to Jacqueline Gareau in 2:34:28, with Patti Lyons moved to second. Ruiz continued to insist as late as 2000 that she had run the entire course, although acquaintance Steve Marek said she privately admitted that she had jumped into the race and was shocked to discover she had finished first. The scandal permanently tainted the 1979 New York and 1980 Boston results and remains a defining example of sporting fraud; Ruiz later faced unrelated arrests for embezzlement and involvement in a cocaine deal.
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