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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that proves there's more than one way to

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Speaker 1: make history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode, we're

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Speaker 1: exploring a scandal that took the running world by storm

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Speaker 1: in the time when someone won the Boston Marathon without

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Speaker 1: actually running it. The day was April one. Came out

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Speaker 1: of nowhere, ahead of all the other women. I just

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Speaker 1: saw someone stumble out of the crowd in front of me,

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Speaker 1: across the street. This was on Commonwealth of probably about

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Speaker 1: a half mile from the finish choosing track clothes and

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Speaker 1: wearing a number. But I thought someone had just sort

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Speaker 1: of stumbled into the race. Maybe somebody was a little

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Speaker 1: crazy or something. A twenty six year old New Yorker

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Speaker 1: named Zie Ruiz cheated her way to victory at the

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Speaker 1: eighty four annual Boston Marathon. She crossed the finish line

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Speaker 1: in first place with a time of two hours, thirty

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Speaker 1: one minutes and fifty six seconds, the third fastest time

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Speaker 1: in the history of the marathons women's division. Ruiz was

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Speaker 1: awarded a medal and a silver bowl for her victory.

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Speaker 1: She was also crowned with a laurel wreath, and that's

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Speaker 1: when things started to get suspicious. Despite having just run

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Speaker 1: a twenty six mile race in seventy degree heat, Rosie

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Speaker 1: Ruiz had barely broken a sweat when she was crowned

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Speaker 1: the winner, Her hair was still neatly styled, and she

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Speaker 1: didn't even seem that tired. There was also the fact

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Speaker 1: that no other runners remembered seeing Ruise until the final

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Speaker 1: mile of the race, when she appeared to come out

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Speaker 1: of nowhere. These are regularities led to a formal investigation,

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Speaker 1: and eight days later, Ruiz's time was invalidated and her

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Speaker 1: title was revoked. It turned out she had cheated in

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Speaker 1: the world's oldest and most famous long distance foot race,

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Speaker 1: but whether she had always meant to do so is

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Speaker 1: a different question. Ruise was born in Havana, Cuba, on

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Speaker 1: June twenty first, nineteen fifty three. She moved to Florida

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Speaker 1: as a child and later attended Wayne State College in Nebraska.

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Speaker 1: Three years later, she left before finishing her degree and

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Speaker 1: moved to Manhattan, where she took a job as an

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Speaker 1: administrative assistant at a trading firm. In nineteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: Ruise made her first foray into the running world by

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Speaker 1: competing in the New York City Marathon. She placed twenty

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Speaker 1: fourth in the race, finishing the course in just under

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Speaker 1: three hours, an impressive feat. The following year, Ruiz submitted

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Speaker 1: that time in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

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Speaker 1: The New York race would later be used to call

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Speaker 1: her victory into question, as her winning time in Boston

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Speaker 1: was a full twenty five minutes faster than her time

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Speaker 1: in New York. That kind of improvement isn't out of

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Speaker 1: the question, but it would take an awful lot of

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Speaker 1: training and discipline, and by Ruiz his own admission, she

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Speaker 1: had only joined a running club one week earlier, and

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Speaker 1: her only other training had been running around Central Park.

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Speaker 1: She also seemed to have little technical knowledge of long

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Speaker 1: distance running. When quizzed by a skeptical Katherine Switzer, the

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Speaker 1: first woman to run the Boston Marathon, Ruise didn't even

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Speaker 1: know what it meant to run intervals. Take a listen.

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Speaker 1: It was a fantastic race. I really entered into finish.

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Speaker 1: I didn't enterprise myself. It is my second marathon. Most

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Speaker 1: of the time in your first ever marathon, and where

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Speaker 1: was it? It was two hours and fifty six minutes

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Speaker 1: and thirty three seconds in New York last year. In

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Speaker 1: the New York City Marathon last October. Yes, and so

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Speaker 1: you improved from two hours and fifty six minutes to

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Speaker 1: two hours and thirty one minutes. Like I said, I've

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Speaker 1: trained myself. I enjoy running very much. I'm Joryland. This

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Speaker 1: is running, and lately I have been training very hard.

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Speaker 1: Have you been doing a lot of heavy intervals? Um?

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Speaker 1: Someone else has me that I'm not sure what intervals are. Well,

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Speaker 1: intervals are are track workouts that are designed to make

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Speaker 1: your speed and proved dramatically. And if you went from

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Speaker 1: a two fifty six to two thirty one, one would

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Speaker 1: normally expect that you do a lot of speed work.

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Speaker 1: Is someone coaching you or advising you? Uh no, I

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Speaker 1: advised myself. And how old are you? What about any

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Speaker 1: of your pass races? Do you hold any other records

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Speaker 1: or performances? This is my second race and I didn't

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Speaker 1: think I was really gonna do this good here. I

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Speaker 1: really didn't. Rosie Ruez the mystery woman when he we

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Speaker 1: missed her at all our checkpoints. She came through the

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Speaker 1: finition of Fantastic two thirty one. We have to confirm

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Speaker 1: that time at this point, but she was way ahead

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Speaker 1: of a world class field here today in the Boston Marathon.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Rose, Thank you. You can hear the suspicions

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Speaker 1: already being raised in that clip, and it wasn't long

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Speaker 1: before race officials, spectators, and even fellow participants began to

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Speaker 1: call Ruiz's victory into question. In the week the followed

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Speaker 1: Boston Marathon, officials reviewed hours of race footage and hundreds

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Speaker 1: of photographs, but they found no sign of Ruise during

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Speaker 1: the first twenty five miles of the race. They also

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Speaker 1: conducted dozens of interviews with other competitors, as well as

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Speaker 1: spectators and even journalists, but again, no one remembered seeing

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Speaker 1: Ruise until she crossed the finish line. It seemed that

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Speaker 1: Ruiz hadn't run the majority of the race, and it

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Speaker 1: only jumped in ahead of the other runners in the

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Speaker 1: last half mile. With all the evidence against her, marathon

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Speaker 1: officials made the decision to strip Ruise of her title

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Speaker 1: on April twenty nine. That same day, a Canadian runner

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Speaker 1: named Jacqueline Garou was declared the real winner of the

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Speaker 1: women's division. She was given a new medal that had

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Speaker 1: been made just for her, as Ruise actually refused to

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Speaker 1: return the original. After her disqualification was announced, Rosie Ruise

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Speaker 1: maintained her innocence and even offered to a polygraph test

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Speaker 1: to prove she was telling the truth, but the public

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Speaker 1: didn't see the need. The scandal in Boston had compelled

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Speaker 1: the New York City Marathon to launch its own review,

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Speaker 1: and it quickly found that Ruiz's twenty fourth place finish

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Speaker 1: in that race had also been faked. In reality, Ruise

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Speaker 1: had quit the New York Marathon after injuring her ankle

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Speaker 1: at the ten mile mark. She then hopped on a

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Speaker 1: subway for the remaining sixteen miles and then walked to

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Speaker 1: the finish line, where she was mistakenly assigned a time

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Speaker 1: by a confused volunteer. Once her deceptions were public knowledge,

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Speaker 1: Ruise lost her job in New York and had to

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Speaker 1: move back to Florida. She was never charged with a

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Speaker 1: crime for faking her marathon wins, but she did have

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Speaker 1: some brushes with the law in the following years. In

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Speaker 1: two she was convicted of embezzling sixty tho dollars from

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Speaker 1: the real estate company where she worked, and a year

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Speaker 1: later she was arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover detective.

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Speaker 1: She received a combined total of eight years probation for

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Speaker 1: the two offenses, and also served about a week in jail.

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Speaker 1: She continued to live and work in Florida until twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 1: when she passed away from cancer at the age of

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Speaker 1: sixty six. Back in Boston, race officials learned from the

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Speaker 1: scandal in nineteen eighty they implemented tighter security measures to

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Speaker 1: thwart would be cheaters, including video shot at secret locations

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Speaker 1: throughout the race, and eventually computer checkpoints along the course.

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Speaker 1: In that way, Rosie Ruiz left a lasting impression on

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Speaker 1: the sport that came to define her life. It's not

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Speaker 1: the legacy of a first place champion, but it is

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Speaker 1: a legacy all the same, because she never admitted to

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Speaker 1: any wrongdoing. We don't know why Ruis cheated in either

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Speaker 1: New York or in Boston. Some accounts suggests that her

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Speaker 1: boss had been so impressed that she qualified for the

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Speaker 1: Boston Race that he offered to pay all her expenses

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Speaker 1: if she ran in it. This likely would have made

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Speaker 1: her feel pressure to deliver a fast time to make

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Speaker 1: his investments seem worth it. If that's the case, Ruise

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Speaker 1: probably meant to jump into the race somewhere near the

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Speaker 1: middle of the pack, but when her calculations were off,

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Speaker 1: she wound up joining in the lead ahead of the

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Speaker 1: other four hundred and forty eight female runners. Jacqueline Garow

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Speaker 1: later said that she felt pity for Rosie Ruise but

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Speaker 1: didn't harbor any ill feelings against her, and that's pretty

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Speaker 1: much how I feel too. Ruise set out to commit

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Speaker 1: a relatively low level act of fraud and wound up

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Speaker 1: stumbling into a much larger one, one that turned her

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Speaker 1: into a reviled national figure and insured her worst moments

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Speaker 1: would be talked about for decades to come, eventually, even

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Speaker 1: on podcasts like this one. In principle, stealing first place

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Speaker 1: is just as bad as stealing three hundred place, but

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Speaker 1: in terms of public scorn and humiliation, one is going

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Speaker 1: to draw a much stronger response than the other. I

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Speaker 1: don't think Rosie Ruise meant to put herself on the

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Speaker 1: world stage, and once she got there, she definitely didn't

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Speaker 1: enjoy it for any longer than a minute at most.

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Speaker 1: That's enough to warrant at least a little sympathy for me.

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Speaker 1: But if that's not the case for you. Maybe you

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Speaker 1: can at least relate to Rosie's disinterest in running twenty

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Speaker 1: six point two miles all in one go. That's just

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Speaker 1: too far. I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully you now know

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Speaker 1: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: You can learn even more about history by following us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d i HC Show,

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Speaker 1: and if you have any comments or suggestions, you can

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Speaker 1: always send them my way at this day at I

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Speaker 1: heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you

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Speaker 1: back here again tomorrow for another day in history class

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Speaker 1: and it be aptant to the