the fall of media continues: al jazeera gets hoodwinked by hobby jogger "Olympian"

One of the biggest hurdles for athletes on the Olympic path: Money

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“Hundreds of thousands of people tried to get a handful [marathon] spots. It was such a long shot,” Uhl-Leavitt told Al Jazeera.

But with that blessing comes a hurdle on the track to the games. How to train and cover one’s costs.

“When I’m in marathon builds, it’s very time-consuming,” she said.

She has to fit training in where she can between her two jobs – one as a personal trainer and the other as a bartender in her hometown of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida – roughly 20 miles (32km) from Jacksonville.

To offset the costs of getting to the games, she turned to the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.

Training for this high level of athletics is a full-time job. Athletes also travel to compete in different games to hone their skills in the lead-up to the big day. But since most prospective Olympians have to pay their own way for all this effort, it is a nearly impossible situation having to decide between working or competing.

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Here's a thread on running forum, Letsrun, breaking down this runners "claims"

Al Jazeera publishes piece on how alleged Olympic marathoner Ashley Uhl-Leavitt has a GoFundMe. Who?

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This is hilarious. I spent about 2 minutes googling and found this woman’s Instagram. The story is legit except she’s not running the Olympic marathon, she’s running the mass participation marathon that is being run on the same course (the marathon ‘pour tous’). Weird as hell for Al Jazeera to publish this article as if she’s an Olympic marathoner.

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"Ashley Uhl-Leavitt, a New York City marathon legend ..."

Some recent marathons:

2018: Space Coast - 4:10:15

2019 Space Coast - 6:17:58

2022 New York - 4:54:20

LEGEND!

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What makes this even more ridiculous is theres so many lists you can pull up to quickly determine this woman was full of it if you took 3 seconds to google. Journalism is dead.

TLDR: Woman gets a lottery entry into olympic community marathon (basically the same thing as running your local marathon anyone can do, just on the olympic course). Claims to "be an olympian" and starts go fund me to raise money. Al jazeera writes piece on how hard it is for olympians to train and work centered on this clown.