After watching some documentaries on youtube and reading several articles I've been troubled by something that happened a few years ago. Back in 2013 I suggested doing a half iron man as a relay team comprised of 3 friends; my neighbor would do the swim, I'd do the bike, and a best friend's wife the run. I thought it would be a great opportunity to train and race together while still allowing each of us to pursue our own specialties. The first year we did it all was fine, however, the next is the one that troubles me a bit. It was the same group with the same plan, each participating in their favorite event, but that we'd make a concerted attempt to improve on the previous year's results. While discussing strategy we confirmed some basics, among them that the timing chip was to be placed on each participant's left ankle per the race director's direction. After seeing our swimmer off, our runner and myself went to T1 to prepare, there I re-iterated the chip transfer process. Our runner said she'd place the chip on her bib instead, insisting that it works fine in the running events she did. I thought that was a bad idea and suggested, again, that she put it on her ankle so the timing mats could read it accurately. Again she declined. Once our swimmer was in I took off on the bike portion, chip on left ankle, and on my return, cramping badly, I could neither remind our runner nor saw where she placed the chip. I later discovered that it was on her wrist, not ankle. On completing the race, and checking her time (I believe) our runner failed to obtain a time. She stormed around insisting that she needed the time to qualify for another race. She followed up with angry emails to the event organizers and they finally relented and issued her a time. The funny thing is that she had moved the chip to her ankle at some point during the run and insisted that's where it was all along-either there was a chip/mat or other time keeping failure. Pictures do confirm it on her ankle, however our swimmer was certain she left T1 with it on her wrist. Both myself and our swimmer finished top 10 and I made a significant improvement (about 12 min in the half iron man distance) over our previous year's attempt. These results, however, were over shadowed by our runner's anger and insistence on obtaining a qualifying time in her event. I don't recall if she provided GPS results or if the race organizers estimated what her time could or should have been. We ended up letting the whole thing die down and moving on, never participating in this event again. Initially I thought it was and arrogant miscalculation on the part of our runner, but have since been wondering if it was cheating-specifically to create a plausible excuse for a poor placing should that be the case. It was, in fact the case and her time placed her 3rd from last. So, given that some of these factors are consistent with other, more notorious, cases of cheating, I'm beginning to think that's what may have happened and have been frustrated that our results and efforts were compromised by this. Because I'm curious, and in order to get some closure on this (and without re-hashing this or inquiring directly of our friend), I'm interested to get some other bikeforums members thoughts on this.