Rosie Ruiz Redux

Twenty-seven years after the infamous Rosie Ruiz was exposed as a fraud following her Boston Marathon hoax, we've discovered someone else stupid enough to try and win a marathon by cheating.

Naturally, he's a shady leftist politician.

MEXICO CITY — After a humiliating defeat in Mexico's presidential election last year, Roberto Madrazo appeared to be back on top: He'd won the men's age-55 category in the Sept. 30 Berlin marathon with a surprising time of 2:41:12. But Madrazo couldn't leave his reputation for shady dealings in the dust. Race officials said Monday they disqualified him for apparently taking a short cut — an electronic tracking chip indicates he skipped two checkpoints in the race and would have needed superhuman speed to achieve his win.

According to the chip, Madrazo took only 21 minutes to cover the 15 kilometers between the 20-kilometer and 35-kilometer marks — faster than any human being can run. "Not even the world record holder can go that fast," race director Mark Milde said.

In a photograph taken as he crossed the finish line, Madrazo wears an ear-to-ear grin and pumps his arms in the air. But he also wore a wind breaker, hat and long, skintight running pants — too much clothing, some said, for a person who had just run for almost three hours in 60-degree weather.

Madrazo's outfit caught the attention of New York-based marathon photographer Victor Sailer, who alerted race organizers that they might have a cheater on their hands.

"It was so obvious to me, if you look at everyone else that's in the picture, everyone's wearing T-shirts and shorts, and the guy's got a jacket on and a hat or whatever," Sailer said. "I looked at it and was like, wait a second."

The world record for 15 kilometers is 41 minutes 29 seconds, by Felix Limo of Kenya — almost twice as Madrazo's mid-marathon time.

Soon an investigation was under way and Mexico was abuzz with jokes about how the dirty tricks that have long characterized politics here had apparently made their way to the world of international sports.

At a Mexico City taxi stand on Monday, drivers Octavio Elizalde Cerrillo and Roberto Valle Rivera poked fun at Madrazo's troubles. They, like other Mexicans their age, lived under decades of uninterrupted rule by Madrazo's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which often resorted to fraud to win elections, leaving many deeply distrustful of politicians.

"If he's a cheat at one thing, he'll cheat at anything," said Valle Rivera, 44.

"If you're going to steal, you'll steal here, in the United States, in Europe, everywhere in the world," Elizalde Cerrillo, 41, added with a smile.

Madrazo's reputation at home was already less than squeaky clean. In 1996, Mexico's attorney general confirmed reports that he had spent tens of millions of dollars more than the legal campaign spending limit in his winning 1994 bid for the Tabasco state governorship.