Marathon cheaters exposed

OMTIU's mission statement on Instagram reads: 'Our mission at the Official Marathon Time Integrity Unit (OMTIU) is to restore truth, accuracy and transparency to distance running.

"We exist to protect the integrity of the sport by ensuring that the time athletes share publicly reflects the times they actually ran.'

One of the account's main points is to expose what they call 'Strava inflation'. That is the idea that the chip time is the most accurate race result because it uses radio frequencies between the start and finish line to track the time, rather than GPS signals.

Now, in most cases, discrepancies between the chip and Strava times can be just a couple of minutes, or even seconds. That's because the GPS on sports watches, such as Garmin or Coros, is not considered as accurate as the radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip located in a race bib.

Having to weave through a sea of bodies on your route can cause your GPS to think it's run further than the course suggests, or maybe it gets in a pickle when you run by tall buildings.

The account is hunting down influencers, whatever their following, who are aware of the discrepancies, but still choose to post their Strava time because it is quicker. They say this is because they want to protect newcomers to running from being 'misled' by social media stars, or athletes, who share 'fraudulent performances'.

They put forward 'case files' in which they accuse content creators of using Strava times that can be several minutes faster than their official chip time.

'We follow a simple triage process,' the self-proclaimed 'Chief Integrity Officer' of the OMTIU tells Daily Mail Sport. "We don’t issue infringements to private individuals or inexperienced runners who are just starting their journey.

'Our focus is on influencers, online coaches and experienced runners, people who should understand how race timing works. We only proceed where there is clear evidence that the performance has been deliberately manipulated to appear faster than the official result.'

In February, OMTIU posted their top five marathon time infringements, which they based on 'publicly available data, timing records and performance patterns'.

Among the five, the biggest discrepancy between the Strava and chip times was 23 minutes from Zae Mangu, otherwise known as @_fitZae on Instagram, a fitness content creator from New Zealand.

After running the Auckland Marathon, he shared that he had run a time of 3 hours and two minutes with his followers. However, OMTIU believe that data proves Zae stopped his watch 4km before the finish line, despite the activity on Strava suggesting he had run 42.2km.

His official chip time, which was not initially shared online, was in fact 3 hours 25 minutes and 42 seconds. Zae has since deleted his post and shared the official time on Instagram in a marathon recap video.

Holly Archer, a European indoor Championships silver medallist in the 1500m, praised the investigative work of OMTIU in the comments of Zae's particular 'case file', writing, 'This is so NEEDED'.

'In many cases, individuals contact us shortly after to acknowledge the issue,' OMTIU adds. "We're always open to discussion and resolution, and if someone corrects their result, we fully support that. The objective is accuracy, not escalation.

'If asking for honesty is considered harsh, that’s a concern in itself. We don’t discriminate based on the following size: if someone presents themselves as a coach, influencer or business, regardless of scale, there is an expectation they understand how race results work.

'We only highlight cases where it’s clear the individual should know better, and in most instances, they definitely do.'