Colin Ambler/cvnznews.com
Questions have been raised over a social media post shared by The Opportunities Party (TOP) featuring leader Qiulae Wong crossing the finish line at Auckland’s Runaway Marathon event while encouraging support for the party ahead of Election Day.
The post showed Wong at the finish of the event’s 11km Traverse race. However, online commentators subsequently questioned whether Wong was officially entered in the event after reviewing the published results.
Independent commentator Penny Marie NZ was among those drawing attention to an apparent discrepancy between photographs shared online and the event’s official results listings.
CVNZ News has reviewed the publicly available entrant and results information for the 11km Traverse event and was unable to identify an entry under Qiulae Wong’s name.
The published results record bib number 35013, which appears visible in photographs shared online, as belonging to another participant, Shuari Naidoo, who completed the event in a recorded time of 1:01:29.
The explanation:
The mystery, it turns out, was easily explained. The Opportunity Party clarified in a Facebook post that Wong bought the entry at the last minute from another runner who couldn’t take part.
“There’s been a surprising amount of detective work going into Q’s [Qiulae’s] Sunday morning run! Just to clear things up, she bought an entry last minute for the 11km traverse from someone who couldn’t make it,” the party said.
The woman whose bib Wong wore chimed in in the comments: “I was unwell before the 11km [run] and Qiulae kindly bought my ticket. I can confirm that Qiulae ran the 11km race and I’m so stoked to see how well she did.”
Wong completed an 11km stretch of the Auckland Marathon course in under two hours.
