Natalie Stechyson · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 04, 2026 1:25 PM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Imagine, if you will, that you're in the final stretch of a gruelling 21.1-kilometre half marathon — and you're winning.

You follow the official pace vehicle in front of you, knowing the championship title is just within your reach. But then you realize the car made a wrong turn. And so did you. By the time you circle back to the race course, you've lost.

No, we're not recalling a bizarrely detailed anxiety dream (unless the wrong turn leads you to your former high school, where you realize you never actually graduated and you're also naked).

We're describing exactly what happened on Sunday at the U.S.A. Track and Field (USATF) Half Marathon Championships to Phoenix runner Jessica McClain, sparking controversy and outrage in the running world.

McClain was ahead by a wide margin with about 2.4 kilometres to go when she and the other lead runners followed a guide vehicle on a wrong turn, leading them off-course for about one kilometre.

By the time she caught up, she had lost about two minutes and came in ninth, costing her a spot in the World Athletics Road Running Championships this fall and the $20,000 US prize money. The runners who had been following her placed 12th and 13th.

"I had to come to a stop, make a tight and complete U-turn and run back onto course as a national championship title and a world team spot slipped away," McClain wrote in an Instagram post.

"Something needs to change and safeguards should be in place for athletes who are out there doing their absolute best on race day."

A screenshot of an Instagram post by Phoenix runner Jessica McClain from Sunday. (@jesstonn/Instagram)

'Every race director's worst nightmare'

The Atlanta Track Club, which was the local organizing committee for the race, released a statement on Tuesday explaining that a cascade of unfortunate events led to that critical intersection being unattended at exactly the wrong moment.

A police officer working the race was struck by a vehicle about 90 metres from the intersection, the track club said. The officers guarding the intersection were called to help and left the post immediately, without repositioning traffic cones.

A motorcycle, pace car and four runners then "incorrectly" turned left at the intersection while "the race-related officer(s) assigned to guide them to the footbridge are a block away attending to the injured officer," the statement added.

A police officer arrived back at the intersection on a motorcycle and caught up to the runners going the wrong way. They turned around and rejoined the race at the same point they exited the course.

The injured police officer was taken to the hospital and released the same day, the Atlanta Track Club said.

"It's just heartbreaking and every race director's worst nightmare," Susan Ibach, a runner in Ottawa's rural Manotick community, told CBC News.

Ibach, 56, helps with the annual Ottawa Race Weekend and is involved in the planning of road closures and marking cones so runners know which way to go. She said police are assigned to race corners, and there is a clause that says if an officer gets a call, they have to leave their station.

That's never happened in any of the races Ibach has worked, and she describes what occurred on Sunday in Atlanta as "the worst-case scenario" and "terrible luck."

"A mistake was made, and these runners were impacted by the mistake in the worst way," Ibach said, adding, "I think as frustrating as it is, the race standings should stand as they are. The fact is that people who follow the course get first, second and third."

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Runners given race money, but rankings stand

Molly Born of Chapel Hill, N.C., crossed the finish line first in one hour, nine minutes, 43 seconds. As track and field news site Citius Mag points out, she was running in fifth place at the time of the wrong turn but stayed on course.

She told RunnerSpace.com that she was shocked and confused when she broke through the tape at the finish line thinking she was still behind the leaders.

"I was so far back that I didn't see them make the wrong turn," Born said.

She also posted on Instagram that if a spot on the world team is offered to her, she doesn't plan to take it. "I did not fairly earn it," she wrote. 

McClain and three other runners who followed the lead vehicle appealed after their protest of the order of finish was rejected. The USATF said in a statement that the jury of appeals found that what happened didn't meet the bar for the course not being adequately marked and that even though the vehicle led the runners off track, there's no recourse to change the final standings.

The organization noted that the American team for the 2026 World Athletics Road Running Championships would not be officially selected until May and that the governing body would continue to review what took place in Atlanta.

"We have spoken directly to all the athletes involved and we are grateful for their patience and professionalism despite their understandable anger and disappointment," the USATF said in an Instagram story.

The Atlanta Track Club announced in its statement on Tuesday that it will match the prize money so that McClain gets the equivalent of first-place prize cash, and the two runners who left the course behind her will split the combined total of second- and- third-place prize "because they were shoulder-to-shoulder when they left the race course."

While what happened may be every runner and race director's worst nightmare, it's by far not the first or even the worst of marathon mishaps.

That honour might go to the 1904 St. Louis Olympics marathon, where one runner was chased off course by a pack of wild dogs, more than half the runners dropped out from dehydration, the winner was plied with egg whites, brandy and stimulants, and the first person to cross the finish line was found to have hitched a car ride for part of the course and was disqualified.