Yep, it is weird that the car took a turn at a junction where he was supposed to go straight. What prompted him to turn? I can't remember seeing marshals there, but I might be mistaken.
The route didn't change from last year, so that can't be used as an excuse.
I can't comment on whether the people who failed to qualify are being over-dramatic as I am not in their shoes. But it is a registered qualifier with an impeccable history, so don't I think it was irresponsible to trust and plan around using this event as a qualifier.
I think the least the Race Director can do is to look at the last time-split recorded at 36.2km and compare it to your finish time, and then do a pro-rata adjustment to give the Marathon runners an 'adjusted' finish time. Any adjustment outside of that will be difficult to justify, IMHO.
Me personally, I would prefer if you could submit your FIT file and they align your official race time with the point when you completed the anticipated race distance. But doing this for all affected runners seems unfeasible in terms of resources and not everyone will be running with a GPS watch.
Let's see what they come up with.
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