A marathon race committee is being sued for not closely monitoring registered runners, after a man died during the Xiamen Half-Marathon on December 10 last year.

A woman surnamed Liang, the wife of the deceased, will sue the race committee for negligence towards the marathon participants, after it emerged that some registered runners sold their bib numbers to others. Together with the committee, a person who transferred the bib number to her husband is also to be put on trial.

Liang’s husband, surnamed Wu, was found unconscious when he approached the finish line of the Xiamen Half-Marathon last December. Although first aid was carried out, Wu eventually passed away.

“He had worked out for years and ran twice a week. The Xiamen Half-Marathon was his second attempt at running a marathon. His passing means the family has broken up,” Liang told Shanghai-based news website The Paper.

After an investigation by the committee, it later emerged that there were 30 runners who took part in the event without correct registration. Some used past bib numbers, while most took the place of runners who had officially registered, and passed on their numbers to people who had missed out on registration. Wu was one of them.

A female runner named Chen said that runners who could not participate in the race despite having registered would sell their numbers online to others who had missed out.

The Xiamen Marathon committee immediately made a decision to ban anyone who had transferred a registered bib number from registering for any future races organized by the committee, and would submit each case to the China Track Association for further consultation.

But Liang found it hard to accept the fact that such a large amount of people were running in the race using the registered numbers of others.

“Wu ran the marathon in Xiamen at a great cost. I don’t want to see this tragedy fall on other families” said Liang, who has decided to file a lawsuit against the committee and requested a 1.2 million yuan (around 175,000 US dollars) compensation package for the family.

According to the law firm representing Liang, Wu himself should take some of the blame for intentionally ignoring the regulations of the race, but the committee is also to blame for not carrying out proper checks before the race, and for not dissuading Wu from running the half-marathon.

Gu Liang, an experienced runner and the head of the Lohu Running Association of Shenzhen, suggested that the organizer should set up an official platform for registered participants who cannot run the marathon due to unforeseen circumstances to transfer their registrations to others.