Matthew Choi, a running influencer who ran in Sunday’s New York City Marathon and finished in 2:57:15 had his result disqualified from the event after he was paced by two people on electric bicycles while filming him.
New York Road Runners, the organizer of the marathon, also issued a lifetime ban to Choi for future races and released a statement on Monday that detailed his disqualification.
“After a review and due to violations of World Athletics rules, and New York Road Runners’ Code of Conduct and Rules of Competition, NYRR has disqualified Matt Choi from the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon and removed him from the results,” the statement read. “He has been banned from any future NYRR races.”
Choi, 29, is a popular running fixture on social media with over 400,000 followers in Instagram and 460,000 on Tiktok. After Sunday’s race, numerous posts about runners being impacted by the bike riders next to him were posted on Reddit. He has already faced scrutiny after running the Houston Marathon in 2023 with another person’s bib, which is not allowed at the Houston race.
On Tuesday, Choi posted a video on social media where he apologized and took blame for having the electronic bikes on the course.
“E-bikes don’t belong in races. No excuses. I was selfish & take full accountability of my actions,” he said in his post. “I apologize to all the runners impacted. I accept my DQ & lifetime ban from @nyrr. Never again.”
In 2023, he was seen with a film crew on electronic bikes at the Austin Marathon and at the Brooklyn Half (a new York Road Runners race) in May.
During a packed week of marathon-related events, Choi served as an ambassador for Runna, a company that creates personalized training plans. Runna chief operating officer Josh Oppenheim replied to a thread on the LetsRun message board about Choi’s actions and clarified that no one at the company knew he would have electronic bikes on the course.
Oppenheim said Runna has immediately severed ties with Choi.
“I want to be clear that this was not something that we at Runna knew was going to happen, or support as a company, and we have decided to terminate our relationship with Matt effective immediately,” Oppenheim said in his post. “Our ethos and entire mission is about inspiring and supporting runners around the world on and off the race course, and so we are deeply uncomfortable with what happened on Sunday.”
As news of the disqualification spread, Choi’s Instagram account was flooded with comments criticizing his behavior.
“I honestly don’t understand why you need a film crew to film you while running a marathon. You’ve completely lost touch with reality, a post read. “It’s everyone’s race and you’re clearly impacting others by doing that. Film yourself like the rest of us normal content creators, have your people that are cheering for you film you as you run by them. But keep the crew off the course”
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