Scott, Jamil, Ferdinand

This is my follow up post to the follow up posts on this Black Canyon 100 rule violation kerfuffle from late last week. To be honest I wasn’t going to post about it, not wanting to give it more airtime than necessary, but I felt that often the media doesn’t “close the loop” on issues and folks are left wondering what actually comes from it. So, with that said, where’s where we stand:

Ferdinand Airault, the accused runner posted on his social media:

Aravaipa simply treated me like a human being—and I’m pretty sure their decision had nothing to do with me being part of the team. Since a 20-minute penalty or a DQ doesn’t change anything for me, I’ve decided to WITHDRAW myself to avoid any sense of injustice.

Ferdinand takes the high road and voluntarily withdraws his result.

Jamil Coury for Aravaipa with a follow up post to their initial statement:

Sometimes one mistake can turn into several mistakes before turning things around and certainly seems to fit this situation. Ferdinand has accepted this decision and we all look forward to moving forward. 

Aravaipa chooses to DQ Ferdinand to stick to their race rules.

And then Scott Traer get’s the last quote here:

There are no winners or losers in this misunderstanding. We all made mistakes. I know this caused a lot of stress to our community but it also sparked conversations so we can continue to move our sport forward.

This seems to resolve the kerfuffle around Black Canyon and Ferdinand’s race. But there are still a couple of open questions. The main one: why did Scott throw Ferdinand’s Canyons 100M win into his initial accusation? Is that accusation being addressed by Scott? Especially since it seemed to have been a made up accusation that immediately got debunked? The second one: If Scott thinks there are winners and loser I’d love to hear who he thinks won, and who lost?