Administrative Error Boots Charity Runner Out of Marathon Debut in London – runnersworld.com

For months, Sarah Wilson has been training hard for her first marathon. She started running when she moved to London in 2014 to acclimate herself to her new city, and has since crossed off a bunch of races off her list, including half marathons and the Brussels 20K.

This year, she had earned a spot at London, running on behalf of the charity St. John Ambulance, raising funds through efforts like two bake sales and a food-and-drink-packed quiz night.

Then, on March 28, she called the charity to ask when her kit would be available for pickup.

The representative on the phone asked for her name, and when “Sarah Wilson” appeared in the organization’s system, the rep asked Sarah if she was from York.

“No, I’m from London,” said Wilson.

Turns out, her entry had been deleted from the system due to an administrative gaffe—they believed the two Sarah Wilsons were simply duplicate entries.

“If they had checked, they would have seen the phone numbers and addresses were different,” Wilson told Runner’s World.

The charity told her that they couldn’t go back into the system to add her name back in, since it had been locked. The deadline was February 1, and there was nothing they could do to get her back into the race.

“I’m absolutely gutted,” Wilson said. “The training takes over your life.”

The charity did offer her a place in other 2019 marathons, as well as next year’s London race.

“We are really upset that Sarah has trained for a very challenging event and through our human error, we have let her down. We apologize unreservedly,” said Rebecca Mauger, director of fundraising at St. John Ambulance, in a statement.

The London Marathon reached out directly to Sarah, and also offered to get her a place in other marathons this month.

“We [London Marathon organizers] really sympathize with Sarah,” Penny Dain, communications director for the London Marathon, told Runner’s World. “People do make mistakes, and this was one instance where human error has created this unfortunate situation.”

Wilson’s situation has gone viral, spawning the hashtag #LetSarahRun. Tweets range from defiant, to disbelief, to outright anger, and much of the criticism has been aimed at London. One user the Marathon for “deleting the wrong record”—an inaccuracy since it was Sarah’s charity, St. John Ambulance, that deleted her name from their records.

Even Paula Radcliffe, who has three London wins under her own belt, reached out, first tweeting to the London Marathon that she was “sure something can be done about this.”

However, a couple of minutes later, Radcliffe tweeted about Wilson’s situation again, saying that the error was with the charity forms, not with London, and that since Wilson had been offered a place at Brighton, she could still run a great race.

And that’s what Wilson ultimately decided to do: She accepted a spot in the Brighton Marathon on April 14, though she is still disappointed at having to miss out on making her marathon debut at London. She’ll also be taking the charity’s offer to run in the London Marathon’s 40th-anniversary race in 2020.

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“I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone else,” Wilson said. “I hope something changes.”

St. John Ambulance is trying to make sure it doesn’t occur again on their end, too:

“We know how we have got it wrong, and have put extra measures in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” said Mauger.