Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tbilisi Marathon 2009

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. -- Cirt (talk) 15:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tbilisi Marathon 2009

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This article was created in September 2009, and almost immediately PRODded as a hoax. I was able to find some references to it on he web. They weren't the greatest references, but were enough to establish that the article was not a hoax. I added one of the references and removed the PROD. It has had only trivial edits since then, and no edits at all after after September 2009.

However, since then, I've read the article more carefully, and while I still believe it's not a hoax (although it is erroneous, see below), I believe the race is not notable, and the article should be deleted.

The article states that the "marathon" covered "950 meters from the 'Revolution Square' to the 'Garden of Pushkin'". A marathon is 26.2 miles, i.e. 42.195 kilometers. If this 950-meter number is correct, we're talking about a footrace that's a little over a half-mile long, not a marathon. Dozens of little races like this (or longer than this; 10K is the norm) are put on in even small communities across the world. Unless this was a very special 950-meter race (and it does not appear to be), this is not a notable event.

The article claims that it holds the "Guinness world record as the fastest marathon ever run," which, if true, would make it notable. However, this claim makes no sense. First, it was not a marathon. Second, the world record time for the marathon is about 2 hours, double the one-hour time mentioned here. And one hour for a 950-meter race is absurdly slow. The actual record for the 1000-meter distance is a bit over two minutes. This claim of a world-record is too dubious to be relied on to establish notability. TJRC (talk) 18:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. —TJRC (talk) 18:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (country)-related deletion discussions. —TJRC (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Lack of coverage by reliable third party sources. If any record was set on that marathon run, there would be significant coverage of it. Determining whether the record was plausible or not is not needed. WP:V cannot be satisfied here. WP:N can't either. Recommend delete. Aditya Ex Machina 20:22, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I originally prodded this one as a possible hoax. It is still non notable and should be removed. --Stormbay (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete From the same user who was warned about disruption for making up the article "List of islands of Uchania" [1]. I guess that the lesson learned was that if it sounds real, and if you have a link to a source that nobody can read, it might work. Sometimes it does-- we have a number of people who think you're xenophobic if you question something that's sourced to a language you can't read. This one was kind of clever--in the Georgian script, you can see "11:00" and "12:00", and it was adapted to the article as the start and finish times for the "fastest marathon ever run". My view is that if it takes an hour to run 950 meters, they must have been held fast. Mandsford (talk) 13:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There was another site (now dead) in English that mentioned the race. See the edit summaries. It's dead now. TJRC (talk) 14:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.