Settled down on Sunday evening to watch a recording of the Paris Marathon that morning and after flitting through the usual preamble clicked on play at the point when the race actually started. Within a few minutes the race as a spectacle was immediately tarnished by the sight of a moron (wearing bib no 924 ) sprinting ahead of the the lead group holding his smartphone at arm`s length in front of him and filming his “exploits” before disappearing back into the field. Filming for the benefit of who I wondered. What he did was basically selfish,disrespectful to the other competitors in the race be they elite or club or charity runners and disrespectful to France particularly after the horrendous events in 2015. If he was a club runner I would hope that his fellow members will at the very least shun him and hopefully take away his membership for bringing his club into disrepute. As for his family , and friends if he has any , well their judgement hopefully might be that they are linked to a wrong un and be wary of him in the future ( he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties at least and this was obviously not a spur of the moment youthful folly but a pre-planned stunt ). Later on in the race there was a variation on the same theme. This time a male runner,same age group but not wearing a numbered bib, ran with the group containing the leading females for around about 3- 4 miles. No smartphone in hand this time but he was constantly looking around and behind as if he was expecting to be plucked off the ground by a couple of motorcycle gendarmes. Again totally disrespectful to the other runners and no doubt disrupting the pace of the group he was running with. Eventually of course he dropped out either through exhaustion or embarrassment or both.
Back to the race as such. I have never run the Paris Marathon and have never watched it on the box before. Looked like a fantastic flat PB type course with lots of great scenery/ historic monuments. So a lot like London but without the amazing crowd support.
