By Kyle Merber
March 4, 2026
During the first stage of the 2025 Volt ao Algarve there things went haywire just before its conclusion: 50 riders mistakenly followed the lead vehicles down a chute that brought them to a parallel road from the finish line.
Filippo Gana crossed first with his arms up, but following massive pushback from the other athletes and their respective teams the race was annulled. The race director said they decided to cancel the stage because “sporting truth did not prevail in the end.” There were 192 kilometers of racing and no winner declared.
On Sunday at the USATF Half Marathon Championships in Atlanta, following closely behind the lead vehicle, the likely podium of Jess McClain, Emma Grace Hurley, and Ednah Kurgat made a wrong turn in the closing minutes of the race. By the time they realized what had happened and got back onto the actual course, they were no longer in qualifying position. There was a winner declared—just not the one anyone expected with a mile to go
Also unlike that cycling race in Portugal, this race was a qualifier with the top three athletes earning their spot at the 2026 World Road Running Championships. You can’t just cancel the race. The letter of the law of most road races is that individual competitors are responsible for knowing the course, but look at the race video for yourself and consider how McClain could’ve possibly reached any other conclusion than what she did.
Despite appeals, both technical and emotional, the order in which the athletes crossed the finish line has been upheld as the final, official results. Born has already come out and said she would not be accepting the spot if offered, and it’s a legit possibility that every woman that finished higher than they otherwise would have would follow suit.
These are beautiful displays of solidarity and sportsmanship. It’s too bad they might not make a difference. In the official selection policy, an athlete had to have finished in the top five to be considered for selection to the World Championship team, otherwise the governing body must defer to the descending order list of world rankings. Right now McClain, Hurley, and Kurgat are not the top three Americans.
If you read the USATF statement about the incident, the decision to leave the results untouched feels like it was more about avoiding potential lawsuits than attempting to right a wrong. Everyone is understandably very angry. But hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Behind the scenes there are likely many conversations taking place on how to legally rectify things.
The (mis)handling of this specific incident is not unique to road running. Cycling, triathlon, cross country skiing, and even the Iditarod would all look to their rule book for clarity in a similar situation and likely draw the same conclusion. In some ways, that’s part of the problem. In sport, there are going to be fringe cases and weird one-off circumstances that don’t slot neatly onto a preordained set of rules. As a fan, you know this is the case in moments like this, where strict adherence to the rules feels like more of an affront to justice than an attempt at bringing it about.
Shouldn’t the specific nature of an event factor into how rules are interpreted within it? This was both a national championship and a selection event. Justice means different things in each of those two scenarios. Paying out double prize money seems like a relatively simple (albeit costly) way to deal with the championship piece. But the goal of a qualifier is to pick the best team. In this case, we saw enough of the race unfold to know who the top three would have been had there not been a few missing cones and an erroneous lead car driver bungling some directions.
We can learn from Formula 1 about how to handle the absurd and unpredictable events that a two sentence clause could never predict. At the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix, Victoria’s Secret model Winnie Harlow waved the checkered flag a lap early, indicating one to go, and subsequently caused mass chaos and confusion among the drivers. During these gray area situations, F1 has a “Roll-Back” rule that allows the judges to use the last full lap to determine final placings.
Wouldn’t that be a nice article to have right now? Forget the times and go off of who was winning at mile 12—that’s how USATF would send the best team, which is ultimately what Sunday was meant to do.
Kyle Merber
After hanging up his spikes – but never his running shoes – Kyle pivoted to the media side of things, where he shares his enthusiasm, insights, and experiences with subscribers of The Lap Count newsletter, as well as viewers of CITIUS MAG live shows.
