Imagine you are running the New York City Marathon, trying like hell to hold onto the group setting a sub–three hour pace.
You are ingesting disgusting energy slurry from gel packs, listening to Crazy Frog on your wireless headphones for motivation, and longing for your foam roller. You can feel sweat emerging from the soles of your feet. As you run north up First Avenue, you feel the ache set in, and you grit your teeth. You are off the pace, slowing, but you know you only have to endure 30 more minutes of pain. All of a sudden an electric Citi Bike, ridden by a guileless jackass in a yellow hi-vis vest, catches up to you, then a second electric Citi Bike, also piloted by a jolly dipshit in a yellow hi-vis vest, catches up to you. Through the throng of miserable souls, they are filming a hot shirtless man in tactical sunglasses, who is trying not to look at the phones filming him as he runs at 6:44 pace. You look around at your fellow runners to see if they are also seeing this trio when you drift ever so slightly into one of the electric Citi Bike cameramen, who sends you careening into the barriers and onto the deck. As you seize into a full-body cramp, you wonder what final product could be worth such debasement, and then you smile as you realize that because of the social media video content that ended your marathon, people will discover running and lead better, healthier lives. Your sacrifice was worth it.
That's, like, the best-case scenario running influencer Matt Choi could have imagined. Choi successfully broke three hours this past weekend at the NYC Marathon (which, circumstances aside, is pretty fast) only for organizers to disqualify him and ban him from future races. They did so because he hired two guys to ride Citi Bikes so he could produce TikToks and Instagram videos of himself running. That is pretty obviously dangerous and stupid, as race courses are tightly packed with runners. Indeed, the danger was not just theoretical, as he later admitted that the bikes blocked water stations, and several commenters on his Instagram said they were clipped.
"New York Road Runners has disqualified Matt Choi from the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon and removed him from the results," NYRR, the organization that puts on the marathon and had Choi host a panel days before, said in a statement. "He has been banned from any future NYRR races." This is not the first time Choi has engaged in some marathon shenanigans, merely the first time he's gotten in trouble for it. Runners at the 2023 Austin Marathon and the 2024 Brooklyn Half complained about him using an ebike cameraman, and he apologized after the 2023 Houston Marathon for running under someone else's name. When people pushed him on why he had bikes on the race course in the past, he said he was doing it to further a noble cause.
"My media crew does their best job at staying out of the way of the runners," Choi said in 2023. "The intent of my content has always been around raising awareness around the sport of running. If we can’t show elements of running, especially competition day, it won’t continue to grow to new audiences."
He issued an apology after the NYRR decision came down. "I fucked up," Choi said on Instagram. "I was selfish on Sunday to have my brother and my videographer follow me around on the course on e-bikes and it had serious consequences. We endangered other runners, we impacted people going for [personal bests], we blocked people from getting water, and with the New York City Marathon being about everyone else and about the community, I made it about myself."
Choi succeeded in raising awareness, all right, as I am now aware of the fact that one of his sponsors dropped him after the stunt.
