B'lore Marathon goof-up: Lead runners take wrong turn, take Metro to return

Bangalore, Oct 21: The Bangalore

on Sunday turned out to be a bitter experience for three champion runners who were leading the race as they had to abandon the event when a pilot vehicle the trio were following missed a U-turn !

Former Asian medalists Suresh Kumar Patel, Inderjit Patel and Soji Mathew were following the pilot vehicle and they had covered around 20 kilometers when the vehicle reportedly missed the U-turn on Old-airport road. The runners, unaware, kept following the vehicle which took them to Domlur flyover.

The officials informed them about the goof-up and the trio, reportedly, had to beg morning joggers for Rs 20 to catch a bus to Indiranagar Metro Station and from there, to MG Road via Metro train.

Suresh finished sixth in the recent Asian Games, and Soji is a former Asian cross-country champion. They didn't hide the disappointment. "Last Sunday I won the Delhi CRPF half marathon in 1 hour, 11 minutes braving hot conditions. Today, I was hoping to do under 1:03 minutes. I'm not bothered about missing the prize money but it is disappointing that we had to suffer this humiliation," Inderjit Patel said, as quoted by a TOI report.

"There were no officials on the road where we supposed to take a U-turn (at 16km). We were following the pilot vehicle and we had covered around 20 kilometers in one hour as we were going at a pace of 2 minutes, 59 seconds per kilometer. We were hoping to finish soon when the officials asked us to turn back. At that point there was no point in continuing the race and we decided to stop," Inderjit Patel said, as reported by TOI.

Oneindia News