Early morning good news

Rob(walks into the hotel room this morning and says): "Hey, I've got some good news. We all move up 14 spaces in the overall standings!"

The news was:

THE RESULTS of the men's race in ING Ottawa Marathon were thrown for a loop yesterday after 14 elite runners accidentally took a shortcut early in the race on a tricky part of the course in New Edinburgh.
In one of the most bizarre scenes in the history of Ottawa sports, several thousand spectators lined the course to cheer on the "leaders" who would later be disqualified.
Amos Tirop Matui of Kenya sprinted first to the finish of the 42-km course near City Hall to the roaring approval of the crowd, but none of the spectators knew that something had gone wrong about 9 km following the start.
For race organizers, it was an embarrassing and unfortunate blemish on an otherwise picture-perfect day in which event records were shattered by Canadian winners in the women's and wheelchair marathons.
"I'm certainly not happy that it happened. We'll obviously try to prevent it from happening again," race director John Halvorsen said.

The glitch occurred early in the morning at the corner of MacKay and Charles streets near the grounds of Rideau Hall, a few minutes after a lead group made a proper left turn from MacKay onto Charles.
A few minutes later, a dozen of marathoners suddenly merged onto Sussex Dr. ahead of pace vehicles and some 100 metres in front of the legitimate leading racers.
Officials desperately tried to get the race back on track as the runners headed into Rockcliffe Park before turning back toward downtown, but there was little they could do.
"We do our best to educate the runners on where the route is," said Halvorsen.
The racers that followed the wrong route headed straight on MacKay instead of turning onto Charles and emerged back on the proper track, a shortcut of about 450 metres.
Organizers contend the breach occurred because two high school-aged volunteers left their post to direct runners in the proper direction, and that a "civilian" vehicle entered the course and broke through a barricade blocking the portion of MacKay that wasn't part of the course.
Several racers in the rogue pack said they believed that vehicle to be an official pace car and followed it along MacKay toward Sussex Dr.
At the finish line, the elite runners argued over where the blame should lie.
"It's not the fault of the officials or the judges. It's the athletes who are at fault," said Abderrahime Bouramdane of Morocco, who was the first runner to complete the entire race but crossed the finish line nearly two full minutes after Matui.
Bouramdane, the seventh man to cross the finish line, outright accused the rogue group of cheating, and demanded they be disqualified.
In the end, race officials struck a compromise.
They declared Bouramdane the winner and placed countryman Zaid Laaroussi in second.
All off-course runners were disqualified, but received compensation.
"I think the way they handled it was more than fair. They're making lemonade out of lemons," said agent Lisa Buster who manages two runners -- Peter Njoroge and Ben Kimondiu -- who ran the wrong way.
It's believed Matui received $10,000, with the remaining finishers of the breakaway group getting lower sums, based on their placing and times.

barre.campbell@ott.sunpub.com