On the one hand, seems he earned his place. On the other hand, they should have stopped him running when there was still a chance to protect the (maybe literal) sensitivities of other racers and observers. Enforcement only after he finished is just stupid.
Put another way, if he does it merely to do it, as many runners do, what's to stop him doing it again and again, knowing his personal results will not only be shared with him, but likely the papers?
Like I said. The weakest form of enforcement possible. Their policy accomplished nothing here, and somehow they were proud enough of that nothing to try to get papers to crow about it.
fastest runner I've ever run with (in the army) chainsmoked two newports before running the 2 mile apft. He ran 4:19 the first mile, 4:46 the second. My lardass was lapped. Fucker was already on cig #3 when I crossed the finish line @11:30. Had mercury wings tattooed on his ankles. Shit blew my mind.
Exceptions to the rule don't make the rule obsolete. How many smokers do you know that could reliably run any distance further than 800m? I don't know any, but I do know plenty of people that quit smoking because it was inhibiting their exercise. Being a human that grew up in an area that normalized tobacco consumption and played sports, I've tried cigarettes. It absolutely affects performance in a very negative way. He completed the marathon in spite of his smoking, and would have performed better even if he stopped for a couple weeks beforehand and immediately resumed smoking after.
Don't feed the troll, guys. Either this guy is just playing with you, or he probably also believes the earth is flat or something. There are few things so well scientifically explored as the plethora of different negative consequences of smoking, so if he would be interested in realistic insights, he would stumble across studies and answers everywhere himself easily, so that is definitely not the case. Also, there are plenty of longterm extremely harmful drugs that might even increase ones performance short term, so this runner obviously didn't prove anything to anyone.
It does feel very familiar, glad I'm not alone. I feel like he looks like some asshole business exec who was disgraced for some reason? Could be way off though