Fast Women: Tigist Ketema wins in Berlin
The confusing case of Camille Herron’s alleged Wikipedia edits
Issue 317, sponsored by Runbuk
Tigist Ketema dominates the Berlin Marathon
Full disclosure, I slept through the first half of the Berlin Marathon, and by the time I figured out how to access a livestream, I only caught the last 64 minutes of the race. I’ve watched enough Berlin Marathons over the years that I knew we weren’t going to see much of the women’s race.
The race coverage is consistently disappointing in that regard. Until the last seven minutes of the race, after the men had finished, I got far more information from following the race tracker than I did from watching the broadcast.
Ethiopia’s Azmera Gebru stayed with or near pre-race favorite Tigist Ketema through 20K, but after that, it was just Ketema and her pacers. And Gebru dropped out of the race some time after 30K. Ketema hit halfway in 1:07:53 and though she slowed a bit, running 1:08:49 for the second half, she was never seriously challenged. The 26-year-old won by two minutes, six seconds, in 2:16:42.
Ethiopians swept the podium with Mestawot Fikir taking second in 2:18:48, shaving 1:57 off of her PR. And third-place finisher Bosena Mulatie had one of the biggest breakthroughs of the day. In January, she made her debut at the Houston Marathon, where she ran 2:26:59. On Sunday, she improved by 7:59, running 2:19:00.
In January, at the Dubai Marathon, Ketema ran the fastest debut marathon ever with a 2:16:07. In April, Ketema had a tougher race in London, where she finished seventh. She trains with Tigst Assefa, who won Berlin in 2022 and again in 2023, when she set the world record of 2:11:53.
Japan’s Ai Hosoda (2:20:31) and Mizuki Matsuda (2:20:42) took fifth and sixth, with Hosoda improving her personal best by 71 seconds and Matsuda improving by 10 seconds. After dropping out of the Olympic marathon, Great Britain’s Calli Hauger-Thackery was a late entry into the race. She said going in that her goal was to fall back in love with the marathon, and mission accomplished, apparently. On top of that, she finished seventh in 2:21:24 and improved her personal best by 53 seconds.
Lisa Weightman, who was frustrated not to be selected for Australia’s Olympic marathon team despite having one of the fastest times, finished 12th in 2:24:40. She is 45 years old. And Great Britain’s Phily Bowden had a breakthrough day, taking 15th in 2:25:47, a 3:27 PR. Thanks to her YouTube channel, Bowden is a fan favorite.
There wasn’t a strong U.S. presence within the elite field, but Kaylee Flanagan was the top American, finishing 23rd in 2:34:03, an 81-second personal best. Kathryn Fleuhr was the second American, taking 28th in 2:36:32. Neely Gracey was the third American, taking 32nd in 2:36:54. (I love that she was willing to lose a few seconds to go back and hug her son.)
Catherine Debrunner of Switzerland, who won five gold and one silver medal at the Paris Paralympics, won her third-straight title in the wheelchair race, with a time of 1:35:23. Susannah Scaroni took second in 1:38:01.
The following athletes won their age groups: Vanessa Wilson of Australia (40–44, 2:28:34), Mirjam Koersen of the Netherlands (50–54, 2:44:38), Kerstin Fiebig and Sylvia Reuß of Germany seem to have finished together (55–59, 2:50:10), Mary Slocum of Ireland (60–64, 3:06:29), Conny Wagener of Germany (65–69, 3:35:11), Yuko Gordon of Great Britain (70–74, 3:34:45), Vera Nystad of Norway (75–79, 4:00:43), and Ingrid Krügel of German (80–84, 5:05:53). Weightman won the 45–49 age group, but honorable mention to Yvonne Van Vlerken of the Netherlands, who was second (2:38:07). (All results | Ketema’s finish)
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The confusing case of Camille Herron’s alleged Wikipedia edits
Last Monday, Canadian Running’s Marley Dickinson broke the news that record-setting ultrarunner Camille Herron and her husband/coach, Conor Holt, have been tied to a Wikipedia controversy that involved playing up Herron’s accomplishments on the site and downplaying those of other top ultrarunners.
The publication reported that accounts linked to Holt’s IP address and Herron’s email removed statements like “widely regarded as one of the best trail runners ever” from Courtney Dauwalter and Kilian Jornet’s pages, while adding similar verbiage to Herron’s own page.
It’s petty, poor sportsmanship, and bizarre, and in the end, the edits will harm Herron’s career and reputation far more than anyone else’s. Perhaps the most damning part of the article was the assertion from Global Organization of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners (GOMU) president Trishul Cherns that it was part of a larger pattern. “In my forty-six years of ultrarunning, I’ve never seen anyone as talented as Camille, who is so dedicated to creating division and animosity within the ultrarunning community,” his statement began.
The resulting discussion brought more attention to Herron’s recent attempts to police the ratification of other athletes’ records. They include Stine Rex’s pending six-day world record, which, if ratified, will break Herron’s record from March and Viktoria Brown’s Canadian 48-hour record, which was ratified. Both Rex and Brown have expressed their frustration on social media. On Thursday, Lululemon, Herron’s main sponsor, released a statement saying they had ended their ambassador partnership with her.
I came away from reading the Canadian Running article with the impression that the person behind the accounts had been maliciously using Wikipedia to lift Herron up and downplay others’ accomplishments for the past seven years. But after doing a deep dive into the edits made by the Temporun73 and Rundbowie accounts, I had different thoughts. (Side note: There’s another account, Runcamille, which seems likely to be linked, but it wasn’t the source of any of the controversial edits.)
I will note that going into this, I had no experience comparing Wikipedia edits, so my research may not be perfect, but my skills improved along the way. I welcome any corrections. But in looking at the edits those accounts have made over the years, my sense is that their main purpose, by far, was to make sure Herron’s accomplishments were recognized on Wikipedia. The secondary purpose seemed to be making sure a wide range of trail and ultrarunning content was accurate. Then recently some of the edits have taken a more petty turn.
This paragraph from the Canadian Running article threw me off: “Since 2017, Herron’s two accounts have made more than 300 contributions to pages on Wikipedia, of which more than half are entirely embellishments to Herron’s page, but there are notable deletions of positive content on the pages of Dauwalter, 2018 Boston Marathon champion Des Linden and Greek ultrarunning legend Yiannis Kouros.”
The person behind the edits was clearly a Herron fan, and the vast majority of the edits the account made seemed to be aimed at making Herron look better. But I don’t think anyone would be covering this if Temporun73 and Rundbowie’s worst action was raving about Herron.
I found that quite a few of Temporun73’s 237 edits to Wikipedia were to update records and add factual data. Yes, that was often in ways that benefitted Herron, but the account also put time into adding positive content about other trail and ultrarunners, especially women. Here’s one example, from 2019. And here’s another. It’s entirely possible that in that second one, moving Dauwalter down on the page was part of the point, but early on, any jabs seemed to be more subtle. (If you click on visual edits, red is what they removed, green is what they added.)
Based on my interactions with Herron over the years, I know that she cares about details and stats. She is the kind of person who would message me unprompted to point out that an article I linked to should have distinguished between the terms ultrarunning and trail running. She is someone who cares about the difference between a world record and a world best and whether a record has been ratified yet. Attention to detail is important to her, and the sport needs people like that. And someone like that can be a good match for Wikipedia.
While the Canadian Running article states that the accounts deleted positive content from Linden’s Wikipedia page, I was unable to confirm that the accounts made any edits to Linden’s personal page.
I asked Dickinson, the author of the article, about it, and as an example, he sent me a link to content Temporun73 edited about Linden, on the Ultramarathon page. But when taken in the context of the other edits on the page, it doesn’t appear to be malicious in any way. They removed a mention of Linden’s 50K record from a particular section, but that was because it no longer belonged there. At the same time, Temporun73 updated the 50K record to indicate that Linden now officially held it.
I also ran into an example of Temporun73 removing Linden’s 50K record from the same page, but that was with the rationale that it hadn’t been ratified yet. When it was ratified, Temporun73 added it. So if there was anything malicious toward Linden on Wikipedia, I missed it. But researching this led me to revisit this 2021 tweet in which Linden wrote, “Camille has been lobbying different complaints to officials since before I even raced, so pretty sure she’s just never going to count it.” So while I found no evidence on Wikipedia, it appears there was some headbutting there.
There are, however, edits that Temporun73 and Rundbowie made that would be difficult to rationalize as anything other than bitter. Those center around who deserves GOAT status in trail/ultrarunning. The first example I found of this was in April 2020, when Temporun73 removed “is considered to be Britain’s greatest endurance athlete” from Lizzy Hawker’s page. It’s not clear if they didn’t think it was well sourced, or maybe they were disputing the claim. I’m curious about the rationale there. It’s possible that one can be explained.
Things appeared to escalate in September 2023. That’s when Temporun73 first removed the line “widely regarded as one of the world’s best female trail runners” from Dauwalter’s page. Then Temporun73 was banned from Wikipedia and the newly-created Rundbowie account took over and did the same in February, and again in March. I can’t see a way to explain that one away. Dauwalter, winner of three of the world’s most famous 100-milers in a single season, certainly is widely regarded as one of the world’s best trail runners.
In February, Rundbowie removed the line “often considered the best ultrarunner in history” from a Yiannis Kouros mention on the Ultramarathon page. And immediately after, they removed “He is sometimes given the epithets ‘Running god’, ‘Pheidippides’ Successor’” from Kouros’ personal page.
Two days later, on March 1, they removed “Widely regarded as one of the greatest trail runners of all time” from Jornet’s Wikipedia page. And then they did so again on March 19. I paid less attention to their edits to Herron’s own page, but on April 10, Rundbowie added the line, “She is widely regarded as one of the greatest Ultramarathon runners of all time” to Herron’s page, with links to four supporting sources.
As far as I can tell, the next series of potentially controversial edits all had to do with Rundbowie taking issue with the mention of several of Rex’s records (and a few others’) on the Ultramarathon page, in June and September. There are too many edits to link to each of them here, but you can see the history in Rundbowie’s edits. To my knowledge, Rundbowie was correct that Rex’s 48-hour performance from June isn’t eligible for world record ratification and her more recent records have yet to be ratified.
So while I don’t doubt that things have been less than cordial between Rex and Herron due to Herron disputing the validity of the performances, I also haven’t seen anything to indicate that Rundbowie is wrong in making those edits. But I think the Canadian Running article prompted a lot of people to air gripes about Herron they’ve held on to over the years.
On Monday, in response to the article, Herron tweeted, “It’s made up. Someone has an ax to grind and is bullying and harassing me,” but she later deactivated her account. Later in the day, Holt put out a statement saying the Wikipedia edits were all his and accused some prolific Wikipedia contributors of being cyberbullies. (I’ve seen no evidence to support that.) He did not address why the edits were made to other ultrarunners’ pages.
After Lululemon announced that they had parted ways with Herron, she posted a message on Instagram, which she later deleted. I’ve never seen someone’s running career do such a quick 180 in a case that didn’t involve doping, although one could argue that this was building for some time. Because there’s generally little prize money in ultrarunning, athletes like Herron rely heavily on sponsorships, and it seems like this could be tough to come back from.
Neither Herron nor Holt has provided any sort of sincere apology or explanation this week, and I think their comments thus far have only made things worse. At the same time, no runner deserves to be on the receiving end of the kind of pile-on Herron has been subject to this past week. When the news broke, she was in Greece, getting ready to compete in Spartathlon. She started the race but ultimately dropped out. Given the events of the week, I am truly concerned about her mental health, and I hope she has access to the necessary support.
In the midst of lots of nastiness, Sabrina Little’s comments have been a breath of fresh air. Little, an ultrarunner, philosopher, and author of The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners reminded people on Twitter that “how we talk about the situation says a lot about our character, too.”
“I don’t think the solution is lowering standards or diminishing harms or explaining them away,” Little wrote in another post. “That’s not right. But I also think leaving people without space to make amends, even later on, or assessing these situations without self-examination, is the wrong answer.”
When the news broke, I was working on a story about autistic women who run, and the draft that I had started writing centered on Herron’s story. When Herron revealed her autism and ADHD diagnoses in June, she became the most high-profile openly autistic runner that I’m aware of.
To have someone with such a large platform sharing content about autism felt like a really cool step forward for the running community. But this past week has felt like a step back, as some people have speculated about whether she did what she did because she’s autistic (nope) or questioned whether she’s lying about her diagnoses (nope).
I spoke to her earlier this month, and she had a lot of interesting things to say about discovering she was autistic and wanting to help bring neurodivergent runners together. And now I’m not sure that any of it will see the light of day, because I don’t want this development to distract from the topic.
I don’t want to downplay any of the harm Herron has allegedly caused in the running community, but as Little mentioned, I also hope that over time, the community can help create “space to make amends.”
ATHLOS raises the bar
I’ve run out of time and space to say everything I could about ATHLOS, but the inaugural event, held on Thursday in New York City, was a fantastic step forward for the sport. I loved seeing the athletes treated like royalty—the winners literally received crowns worth $25,000 and everyone earned prize money. The flashing bracelets in the crowd were a nice touch, as were the mostly-female broadcast team, the mini bibs, athletes choosing their own music, and the event’s party atmosphere. Until Thursday, I didn’t think it was possible to underdress for a track meet.
There were so many details, small and large, that ATHLOS did well. And following up the races with a 30-minute performance by Megan Thee Stallion was next level. I appreciated this article from Runner’s World, and it was interesting to read that at least one fan flew to the event not realizing they’d be seeing a full-fledged track meet, too.
Most of the coverage of the event hasn’t focused on the results, and in a way, who actually won the races felt like somewhat of an afterthought. But for the record, the winners were: Faith Kipyegon (1500m, 4:04.79), Tsige Duguma (800m, 1:57.43), Marileidy Paulino (400m, 49.59), Brittany Brown (200m, 22.18), Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith (100m, 10.98), and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn (100mH, 12.36). If it had been more of a standard track meet, I think there would have been more discussion about why the 100m hurdlers weren’t called back. (The Athletic link)
I love that the ATHLOS team is looking at the sport with fresh eyes and seeing new possibilities. Now other meets can take the ideas that work for them and build from there. Meet founder Alexis Ohanian has said repeatedly that ATHLOS will be back, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the event can grow. (Results | Replay)
Other News and Podcasts
Former Huntington University cross country and track & field coach Nick Johnson was convicted of sexual battery last week, in a case involving an athlete he formerly coached. He’ll be sentenced on October 17; the charge carries a minimum sentence of six months and a maximum sentence of 2.5 years. This is not Johnson’s first brush with the law. You can read more about that in this article from the IndyStar. Johnson has also been banned by the U.S. Center for SafeSport. (Correction: I mistakenly wrote that Johnson initially coached Addy Wiley at Huntington University, but he was fired nearly two years before she enrolled at the school. His wife, Lauren Johnson, currently coaches Wiley.)
Faith Chepkoech, winner of this year’s Beach to Beacon 10K, among other things, has been banned for three years after testing positive for EPO. Chepkoech is only 21 years old, so she will be 24 when her ban ends. (I’m not sure how I feel about lifetime bans, but that seems like a good case for longer bans.) Fortunately Beach to Beacon seems confident that they will be getting Chepkoech’s $10,000 in prize money back. Edna Kiplagat is the new winner of the race.
Shelby Houlihan’s four-year ban ends in January and on The Running Effect Podcast, she said she doesn’t know what her sponsorship or training situation will be yet. She said conversations are “kinda beginning to happen.”
After racing at ATHLOS, Nia Akins told reporters that she’s moving back to Philadelphia and she’ll be coached by Ajee’ Wilson’s longtime coach, Derek Thompson.
I loved hearing about some of the details of Tara Dower’s Appalachian Trail FKT on both Singletrack and the FKT Podcast. On the latter, her crew chief was also part of the conversation. Dower was also featured by Good Morning America on social media last week.
Two more podcast episodes I loved last week: Lauren Peterson, a political speechwriter and runner, was on the Ali on the Run Show last week and it was one of my favorite AOTR episodes yet. And especially if you are a runner who has faced medical setbacks, I highly recommend listening to Yulady Saluti’s story on What’s Inside the Box? Given what she has been through, it’s all the more incredible that she ran a 3:10 at the Boston Marathon at age 43, not long after taking up the sport.
Additional Results
If you’re looking for breakout stars in the NCAA this season, Villanova’s Sadie Sigfstead is an early contender after she won the Nuttycombe Invitational, hosted by the University of Wisconsin, on Friday. She covered the 6K course in 19:55.7. Penn State’s Florence Caron also had a big day, taking second in 20:03.2. The University of Washington, ranked No. 5, won the team title. (Results)
Another contender is New Mexico’s Pamela Kosgei. In her first race in the NCAA, she dominated the Cowboy Jamboree, hosted by Oklahoma State. Kosgei, sister of former marathon world record holder Brigid Kosgei, ran the 6K course in 19:50 and won by 43.5 seconds. New Mexico also won the team title. (Results)
Auburn’s Brenda Jepchirchir, who is also new to the NCAA, won Missouri’s Gans Creek Classic, running 19:50.1 for 6K. Stanford’s Zofia Dudek (19:53.6) and Sophia Kennedy (19:55.6) went 2–3 and led their team, ranked No. 8, to a win. (Results)
Arkansas’ Mia Cochran and Paityn Noe finished in a dead heat at the Chile Pepper XC Festival, both running 15:56.3 for 5K. Texas won the team title, and I was impressed by 800m specialist Michaela Rose of LSU, who finished eighth in 16:41.4. (Results)
Kenya’s Sarah Naibei won the Virginia 10 Miler in 55:00. (Results)
Everlyn Kemboi won the Boulderthon 5K in 15:50, Mahlet Mulugeta was second (16:07), and Emma Coburn was third (16:11). Also Kate Grace is back to racing. I’d love to know how she ended up with a chip time of 20:30 and a gun time of 18:35. Brittney Feivor won the half marathon in 1:15:51. (Results)
I am out of room, but thank you so much to Runbuk for sponsoring Fast Women this week and make sure to check out the North Pole Marathon if you’re looking for an adventure. I hope you all have the best week possible, and I’m thinking of all of you who have been affected by Hurricane Helene.
Alison
Really appreciate the attention to detail and nuanced explanation of the allegations against Herron - best breakdown I've seen, so thank you!
Thanks for going into a deeper dive about Camille… I also was surprised by the allegations and I too hope there is space in the running community for grace, forgiveness and amends.