Correction to Coventry ParkRun result, 03-Mar-2012

By Rob | March 4, 2012

A mix-up with ParkRun barcodes caused Sphinx AC’s Thomas Hopkins to be incorrectly credited with finishing second.

It seems that Thomas Hopkins is related to Stuart Hopkins, the well-known and very able runner from Kenilworth Runners.

This photo:

was taken just after the winner crossed the line (he was so fast around the course that he took the photographer by surprise, causing him to miss the opportunity to take his photo actually crossing the line).

This photo:

clearly shows Stuart Hopkins finishing next, with no other finishers being photographed in between.

It can only be assumed that Stuart Hopkins accidentally used Thomas Hopkins’ bar code at the results desk, causing the mix-up. It appears that Thomas Hopkins didn’t even run. ParkRun’s official results have been updated to show that Stuart Hopkins finished second.

This appears to be a genuine mistake and at no time was there ever any intention to mis-represent the ability of one of Sphinx AC’s juniors. Our results are “scraped” (electronically) from ParkRun’s electronic results and if there is a mistake on ParkRun’s results, there will be a corresponding mistake on Sphinx AC’s results.