Runners caught cutting corners

One top male finisher and one top female finisher (a brother and sister) appeared to have started the race early, allowing them to get ahead of the bona fide finishers and claim a false finishing spot.

The wrinkle had appeared on race day, concerning the actual order of finish, and it was up to Gumm to spend time over the following week attempting to sort it out.

Organizing and conducting the Kollas-Cranmer Memorial Run is a fully volunteer effort made possible by community members. Organizers make every effort to maintain accuracy.

As to participants, 99.5 percent of people do so because they value the exercise and the sense of being part of a community event. But, as was the case this year, instances occur when participants do veer from the course, so to speak, and questions arise such as whether someone really completed the race or with what time and position.

In short, there are names that had briefly appeared on the finish-line tally board at Jackson Park but have been removed from the official 2016 results.

In the case of the race-day fourth-place finisher, this was a person who was nowhere in sight among a tight field of top five finishers all jockeying within yards of each other for the duration of the 8-mile race.

The improper finishes were corroborated three ways: statements made by the top five race finishers, observations by race officials, and photographs taken progressively between Odell and Hood River. Gumm talked twice to the individuals involved. Their stories did not jibe and they remained defiant, even questioning Gumm’s right to ask questions — the person who has led the race organization for more than a decade.

We won’t name the people who took it upon themselves to “jump the course.” But it’s important to note that in a Hood River tradition that is recreational but serious, the runners, observers and organizers guarded its integrity.

You don’t cut corners on Kollas-Cranmer and get away with it.