A running influencer with nearly half a million followers who ran the New York City Marathon on Sunday while flanked by two electronic bikes has been banned for life from the marathon and other events held by the organizers.
The e-bike riders were there to film Matt Choi, a former football player who ran the course in just under three hours.
On the crowded course, where some stretches can be tightly packed with runners, his entourage prompted immediate outcry from other runners. Videos on social media showed how the two riders, in high-visibility vests, slalomed between runners on rented Citi Bikes for stretches of the course. On Reddit and other social media sites, Mr. Choi was criticized, with one user calling him “bad for the sport.”
New York Road Runners, which organizes the marathon and other large races in the city, said that it had decided to ban Mr. Choi after determining that he had run with the assistance of two unauthorized people on electric bicycles, who had obstructed runners.
The organization said in a statement issued on Monday it had banned Mr. Choi from any of its future races after a review found that he had violated World Athletics rules and code of conduct and rules of competition of the New York Road Runners. Mr. Choi was also disqualified from the race, and his results were removed.
Mr. Choi did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but on his Instagram page on Tuesday, he posted an apology for having had the two men — whom he identified as his brother and a videographer — follow him. “I have no excuses, full stop,” he said. “I was selfish on Sunday.” He said his choice had consequences, including endangering runners and blocking people from getting water.
Mr. Choi also ran with e-bikes in tow in the Austin Marathon in Texas last year.
After the race in New York on Sunday, commenters on his page criticized the decision to enlist the e-bike riders, including other runners who posted content like @runningfitkristen, who accused Mr. Choi of having “completely lost touch with reality.”
She posted a video on her own page filming herself running with one arm, selfie-style, as an illustration of how to capture the race less intrusively. “It’s as easy as that!” her caption said.
Mr. Choi, of Austin, Texas, was one of more than 55,000 reported finishers in Sunday’s marathon, with a time of 2:57:15. (About 50 minutes longer than the winner.)
On YouTube, he describes himself as “a Korean American Entrepreneur, Content Creator, and Athlete. I’m all about pushing limits, breaking barriers, and living life to the fullest.” He was a former Division 1 football player at Monmouth University in New Jersey, and who worked as a personal trainer.
His online following, which grew during the pandemic, gained him several major sponsors, at least one of which said that it had cut ties with the runner. Runna, a training app, said this week that it had terminated its agreement with Mr. Choi over the incident.
A representative for the company said that Runna had not been aware of Mr. Choi’s plan to have a production crew join him on the course — or that he had run with people on bikes previously — and assumed that the e-bike riders had official permits.
A Runna representatives said there were photographers stationed to shoot along the route, and a plan for capturing the final stretch.
While Mr. Choi’s reputation for stunts was familiar to many in the marathon-running circuit, the New York Road Runners organization appeared not to have been prepared for what he did in the race, selecting him as a panel speaker for the marathon expo before the race this year.
New York Road Runners did not respond to a request for comment on similar incidents in Mr. Choi’s past.
Mr. Choi joins a long list of long-distance runners whose results have been invalidated for skirting the rules. The most notorious example is Rosie Ruiz, a runner who was found to have sneaked into the pack about a mile from the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 1980.
A runner who had finished first in this year’s Orange County Marathon in California was disqualified for improperly accepting water from people not authorized to give it out, including his father, who was one of two riding bikes.
Last year, a top-ranked ultramarathoner had her third-place finish in a race in England thrown out after she was discovered to have gotten a car ride for two and a half miles of the 50-mile course. In 2011, a marathoner was found to have taken a bus rather than run the entire way.
Mr. Choi’s case is different; there was no question about his having run the race, as every minute was captured on film.
He also joins a growing list of influencers whose supposedly disruptive behavior has earned them censure — or notoriety. In recent years, influencers have been barred from or otherwise penalized at gyms, Disneyland and Dubai.
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