Ultra-marathon racer dodges questions after cheating accusations

Ultra-marathon officials are combing through past race results after Mark Robson hung up when asked about cheating allegations.

Mark Robson competed in the Australia Day Ultra race last weekend.

Ultra-marathon officials are combing through the past race results of athlete Mark Robson after he was disqualified from last weekend’s 100km Australia Day Ultra race for hiding in bushes and taking shortcuts.

Mr Robson hung up on The Australian today when asked about his actions during the race in Australian, south of Perth.

“I don’t have to answer any of your questions,” he said.

It also emerged today that Mr Robson had only recently left his job as a sales representative at Perth’s Community Newspaper Group, which is half-owned by News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian.

Multiple sources said Mr Robson had left the role suddenly a few months ago.

He has also previously worked as a sales representative at Seven West Media in Perth and now works as a finance broker.

Australia Day Ultra race day director Ron McGlinn said he would examine all past Ultramarathon events in which Mr Robson competed to determine whether any of the other results were suspicious.

Mr Robson’s swimming coach, Australian long-distance swim legend Shelley Taylor-Smith, told Perth radio station 6PR she was “gobsmacked” over the revelations.

Ms Taylor-Smith said she had “a lot of thinking to do” about continuing to coach Mr Robson, to whom she had not spoken in recent days.

Ultra-marathon racer ‘cheated by hiding in bushes and taking shortcuts’

When ultra-marathon runner Mark Robson crossed the finish line of the gruelling Australia Day Ultra race last weekend, he raised his arms in triumph, shouted “Booyah” and asked the organisers for a medal.

“I think I’ve earned one of them,” said a smiling Mr Robson after finishing fifth in the 100km event in the southwest of Western Australia.

Instead of presenting him with a medal, organisers wanted to ask Mr Robson about their suspicions he had cheated his way to the line — by hiding in bushes and taking shortcuts — in a race that featured elite runners from as far away as Finland, Germany and Britain.

They later concluded the British-born Mr Robson — who is believed to work in finance broking in Perth — had run only about 60km to 70km of the 100km event.

This wasn’t Mr Robson’s first offence. He was suspended for two years by Triathlon Australia in 2014 after an investigation found he had “engaged in deliberate and premeditated actions to gain an unfair advantage” in several events between 2011 and 2013. It is believed he took shortcuts and used other methods of cheating in those events, which included the 2013 Busselton Ironman.

 

When officials confronted Mr Robson after last Saturday’s Australia Day Ultra, they asked him why a timing transponder he wore on his ankle during the race had not produced readings for seven of the eight 12.5km laps.

One official, race instructor Shaun Kaesler, wrote in a report of the incident: “With very shocked eyes … he mumbled and suggested he didn’t know why it didn’t ­record.

“I asked him if he had anything he wanted to tell us as we have suspicions. His only reply was that he ‘busted his arse out there today’.

“With a shocked and dis­appointed look (best explained as guilty) he mumbled that he is ‘not going through the same shit he did three years ago’. With that, Mark grabbed his stuff and left.”

Race director Ron McGlinn told The Australian he noticed Mr Robson starting to climb rapidly up the leaderboard during the event. When other competitors were asked whether they had been overtaken, they said they could not recall seeing Mr Robson.

Mr McGlinn said he could not explain why someone would cheat in such an event. “This is quite a shock for us,” he said. “There were another 120 runners in the race who had been training for months or years for this event, which involved massive effort and emotional turmoil.”

Mr Robson was disqualified from the race and has been banned for life from all future Ultra Series races as well as events held by the Australia Ultra Runners Association. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.