A social media health influencer in China is below fireplace this week after she used a faux bib to run on the Chinese language Half-Marathon Championships in Sichuan final Sunday. The girl was caught when the faux bib was discovered to be similar to that of one other participant, which resulted in her disqualification and a lifetime ban from the race.
The influencer, Liao Xingxing, was in a position to begin and end the race with out anybody noticing. Nevertheless, by Tuesday, a video on Chinese language TikTok (Douyin) surfaced of her carrying the identical bib quantity as one other entrant. The clip confirmed two runners with the identical bib quantity (C4567), which Liao (in pink) was suspected of “cloning.” To make issues worse, the girl simply occurred to be an internet health influencer with 15,000 followers.
In response to the video, Liao defined that she didn’t win the lottery to get into the race, so she was given the bib by considered one of her followers. In line with a report from China’s VCT Information, she had no concept her bib quantity overlapped with another person’s, and believes considered one of her anti-fans tricked her.
A suspicious a part of the story is that photographs of each runners and their bib numbers had been taken, which might assist Liao’s argument. Both approach, the organizing committee of the Meishan Renshou Half Marathon didn’t consider Liao’s story, and reacted with harsh punishment, saying they believed she had printed her personal bib quantity. The incident was additionally reported to the Chinese language Athletics Affiliation, which might lead to further punishment.
The Meishan Renshou Half Marathon is China’s first World Athletics Platinum Label half-marathon occasion, and serves because the nation’s nationwide half-marathon championship. Annually, organizers obtain greater than 150,000 functions to run the race, with lower than 10 per cent of runners accepted.
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For the reason that incident, Liao has deactivated her social media accounts and deleted all her movies and feedback concerning the race. She had posted a complete of 361 movies on Douyin, which acquired 219,000 likes, most of them associated to operating.
Prior to now few months, there have been a number of different instances in China the place runners used totally different bib numbers for races and had been disciplined for it. On the 2025 Normal Chartered Marathon in Hong Kong, 4 Chinese language runners within the males’s 10K and half-marathon races had been stripped of their wins for swapping their bibs, though it was unintended. All 4 athletes had been linked to the identical athlete supervisor, who distributed the bibs to the improper athletes.