TWO men were caught being surrogate runners to help two female runners, Gao Shuwei and Li Min, win prizes at the Shenzhen International Marathon on Sunday, the organizing committee said.

    The four people involved have been banned from attending the Shenzhen International Marathon for the next three years and might be banned from taking part in marathons for life once the organizing committee reports the issue to the Chinese Athletic Association.

    The fraud will also be filed into their personal credit reports as they violated the rules of the marathon.

    According to a name list published by the organizing committee of the Shenzhen marathon the day after the race, Gao and Li ranked in the second and 10th places, respectively, among Shenzhen female runners.

    The list of prize-winning runners was released to the public. Anyone who has an objection about the results can raise their concerns via phone call or email. The committee will then look into whether the objections are true.

    Based on the rules of the Shenzhen International Marathon, the top 10 runners with Shenzhen household registration each win a prize of 2,000 yuan (US$290). This year, the first 11 men and eight women to finish the marathon were expatriates.

    Photos taken during the race showed that the two cheating male runners were wearing the number slips B0575 and B0800, which were supposed to be numbers for female athletes. The male surrogate runners helped win the second and 10th prizes for the original runners, Gao and Li.

    Since it was difficult to register to take part in the marathon, people sometimes sell their entries to others.

    Official figures showed that 67,051 people had signed up to run the marathon this year, an increase of 4 percent from last year.

    The organizing committee had emphasized that surrogate running was not allowed on its official website one day before the race kicked off. Runners who hire or ask others to participate in the marathon for them must bear the consequences.

    Just one week before the Shenzhen International Marathon, two runners died during a half marathon that took place in Xiamen, Fujian Province. One of the deceased runners was in fact a surrogate runner who was not officially approved to run the half marathon. (Zhang Qian)