Over the weekend I was honoured to spectate the IRONMAN 70.3 Syracuse and watch a medal get earned by months of hard work and dedication by an incredible athlete. When I posted the hard-earned medal to my instagram feed after he was done, I failed to realize that the skyline wasn’t Syracuse but Rochester. I lived in Rochester for a few years for school (I went to the Rochester Institute of Technology) but hadn’t noticed. In fact, this is the article where John O’Brien made it known. “The scene depicts an arched suspension bridge over the Genesee River, which runs through downtown Rochester,” stated John, “A spokesman for the Ironman did not have an immediate explanation for the error this morning.”

(Photo of the medal taken by me, actually picked up by the Wall Street Journal as well)

I was very curious how this mishap happened so of course, I googled “Syracuse skyline” and this came up:

Even more curious, I clicked and it led to this website city-data.com which has a thread about the “Best Upstate Skyline.”

The photo led to this pic posted by “585WNY” with the caption: “Rochester: My personal favorite upstate. A Beautiful waterfront, a clean and modern looking downtown, nice architecture.”

The photo that proceeded had, “Syracuse: Pretty nice skyline. The only problem with Syracuse is that there is a difficulty in getting a nice photo of the city”.

Somehow I guess the research ended without anything being read. The designer probably assumed it was Syracuse, never having been there possibly, and the medal was created. It’s sort of understandable because The IRONMAN company is based in Florida.

John mentioned again, “The race started with a 1.2-mile swim in Jamesville Reservoir, then on to a 56-mile bike course that wound through Syracuse’s Highland Forest and parts of Onondaga, Madison and Cortland counties, and ended with 13.1-mile run in and out of Jamesville Beach County Park. It went nowhere near Rochester.”

There were a few things that was super peculiar about the race. However, we weren’t alerted ahead of time. Besides the weather being unpredictable, which does happen, the parking arrangement that seemingly went well that morning caused a 2+ hour delay upon exit. It poured so some cars got stuck on the field. Some athletes were also taken off the course when the storms started happening around 2pm and thankfully allowed to take their bikes 20 minutes earlier because of lightning.