Andrea Karl, the actual female winner of Sunday’s GO! St. Louis Marathon, didn’t get to cross the finish line first and didn’t get to break the tape. That’s because race president Nancy Lieberman says someone else, a woman named Kendall Schler, appears to have slipped in just before the finish line, falsely claiming victory.
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She didn’t cross any of the (checkpoints). She came through the finish line, we manually recorded her. There were no photographs of her at all along the course,” she says. Lieberman says Schler admitted that she took off the sensor strip on her bib, which she also wasn’t wearing on her chest. Schler claimed she did those things out of personal preference, even though they’re not allowed.
Andrea Karl knew she was in first place, and was surprised when there was no tape and fanfare when she crossed the finish line.
“I just figured, ‘Oh, maybe they only are doing that for the overall winner, you know, I’m still extremely happy with my time,’” she said.
The crazy thing is they determined Schler did this last year as well when she pretended to finish in third place! Schler was intitially given $1,500 as the prize for winning this year’s race but thankfully the prize will be granted to the real winner.
