![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-02-at-9.46.18-AM.png\")
Photo: Instagram\/mattchoi_6<\/p>\nPhoto: Instagram\/mattchoi_6<\/p>\n
IRONMAN 70.3 Texas took place in Galveston on Sunday and, in the days since, it has become the centre of a hot debate involving running influencer Matt Choi. Choi, racing his first 70.3, crossed the line in an impressive debut time of 5:01:52, only to be immediately disqualified. He was disqualified for \u201cfailure to stop\u201d after he was caught drafting on the bike and didn\u2019t pull over to serve his two-minute penalty.<\/p>\n
After the race, Choi took to Instagram to apologize, taking full ownership of the mistake and saying he will be back at another IRONMAN event soon. For some people online, this apology was enough, and many people applauded Choi for owning up to the slip-up. For others, however, his apology read as hollow and meaningless, with many people already waiting for him to break the rules again down the road.<\/p>\n
Familiar Territory<\/p>\n
This may have been Choi\u2019s first time getting disqualified at a triathlon, but it\u2019s far from his first run-in with race officials in general. That\u2019s where the problem lies for so many of Choi\u2019s critics. It\u2019s not that he messed up and didn\u2019t realize he had to pull over, but rather that this is just another infraction in a long pattern he has created in recent years.<\/p>\n
The first time Choi really made headlines in the running world was after the Houston Marathon in 2023. He had an impressive sub-three-hour showing that day in Texas, posting a final time of 2:59:35. There was only one problem: he ran under someone else\u2019s name. <\/p>\n
Choi faced a lot of scrutiny for this move, as it is not only prohibited in the Houston Marathon rules, but his sub-three finish earned the other runner whose bib he wore on race day a Boston Marathon qualifying time. As marathoninvestigation.com<\/a> explained at the time, doing this is known as being a \u201cbib mule.\u201d Choi and the friend whose name he ran under were reportedly both banned from the race for two years after this incident.<\/p>\n To his credit, Choi apologized publicly and took full responsibility for this mistake.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d never heard of the term \u2018bib mule\u2019 until just a few days ago,\u201d he said in a video after the Houston Marathon. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that this was a major issue.\u201d<\/p>\n A month after the race in Houston, Choi made the news again, this time at his hometown marathon in Austin, Texas. This time around, he was in trouble for running with two cyclists (one on a regular bike, the other on an e-bike) who were recording him throughout the entire race. Another runner from Austin reached out to marathoninvestigation.com to express their disappointment in Choi and his team\u2019s actions that day.<\/p>\n \u201c[The e-bike] was weaving in and out of runners on the race course, cutting runners off,\u201d this athlete wrote. \u201cI asked both the guy on the electric bike and Matt himself to please get the bike off of the race course and to stop weaving in and out, but this request was ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n In this case, Choi did have permission to have an on-course camera team following him, but he still faced a lot of criticism for affecting the races of other runners in the name of his own content.<\/p>\n Once again, to his credit, Choi apologized publicly and took full responsibility for this disturbance.<\/p>\n \u201cI completely understand the risk of having bikers during a marathon course,\u201d he said in a video after the Austin Marathon. \u201cI apologize if we were in the way of any runners. Our goal was not to block runners or ruin their times.\u201d <\/p>\n Over the next year and a half, Choi didn\u2019t have any issues with race rules, but then, at the 2024 New York City Marathon, came his biggest controversy to date. Once again, Choi brought a crew of e-biking cameramen onto the race course to film him, but, unlike in Austin, race organizers in New York City had not given him permission to do so.<\/p>\n Anthony Chan, a triathlete from San Diego and Slowtwitch contributor, happened to be running in New York that day, leading the three-hour pace group along the race course. Chan has run as a pacer at the NYC Marathon for over a decade, and he says Choi directly impacted himself and the group of runners with him that day in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember just getting to one of the water stations and his bikes were literally in front of me,\u201d Chan says. \u201cAnd so I\u2019m like, \u2018Okay, well, I\u2019m not getting any water.\u2019 And then there\u2019s like 50 to 150 people behind us following our pacer flags who also can\u2019t get water.\u201d<\/p>\n Chan was far from the only person who noticed Choi that day. Many people complained online. It got to be such a big story that the New York Road Runners<\/a> (the organization behind the NYC Marathon and many other races) ultimately decided to hit him with a lifetime ban from all of their events.<\/p>\n As is becoming the norm here, to his credit, Choi apologized publicly and took full responsibility for this blunder.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no excuses,\u201d he said in a video after the race. \u201cI was selfish on Sunday [\u2026] and it had serious consequences. We endangered other runners. We impacted people going for PBs. We blocked people from getting water. [\u2026] For anyone I impacted, I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n It was another heartfelt apology, and Choi received a lot of praise online for being so clearly willing to learn and grow from his mistake.<\/p>\n Then he made the same mistake again. <\/p>\n Less than a year after the NYC incident, Choi raced the Marquette Marathon in Michigan in Sept. 2025. Once again, there were reports of him running alongside and behind a videographer on a one-wheel board. It is unclear whether Choi received permission to have a camera on course with him, but whatever the case, other runners were once again irked by the setup, with one athlete reaching out to marathoninvestigation.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was definitely weaving in and out of the course [and] near other runners,\u201d the runner wrote. \u201cIt was definitely annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n This time, there wasn\u2019t too much uproar online, so Choi didn\u2019t address the issue or apologize publicly. That was his last hiccup before transitioning to triathlon, but it didn\u2019t take long for him to bring controversy to the world of multi-sport racing. <\/p>\n A DQ in Texas<\/p>\n Slowtwitch reached out to Choi for comment, and while he did not respond, he did put his thoughts about the DQ in a post on Instagram. He wrote that he knew he had received a drafting penalty in the moment, but he \u201cended up missing the penalty zone tent\u201d and thought that two minutes would be added to his final time.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are some of the learning curves when doing a new sport and I love it because it shows that I\u2019m a beginner with a lot to learn and this is also a reminder to read the athletes manual,\u201d he continued. (In a separate post, Choi added that he also neglected to attend the athlete briefing before the race.)<\/p>\n Many people accepted this, saying they themselves have made similar mistakes. A friend of his, triathlon coach Natasha Van Der Merwe, even claims part of the blame for the race day mixup, saying she gave Choi a rundown of everything he needed to know about triathlon before his 70.3. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why I took responsibility [for the DQ], because in that conversation and in a few texts back and forth [\u2026] I gave him all the information,\u201d Van Der Merwe says. \u201cI did tell him about the drafting rule for sure, but I didn\u2019t say, \u2018Hey, if a penalty does happen, this is what you need to do.’\u201d <\/p>\n One pre-race chat and a few text messages about race strategy and rules was clearly not enough to fully prepare Choi for his first 70.3, which comes as no surprise to his fellow endurance-focused content creator Noel Mulkey. Mulkey is a 14-time IRONMAN finisher and has been a dedicated triathlon content creator for more than 10 years, and he says that \u201cif anyone should read the rules the most, it\u2019s Matt.\u201d<\/p>\n While she wouldn\u2019t put all of the blame on Choi, Van Der Merwe says she does still agree with Mulkey on that note, saying that Choi \u201cshould have done that extra due diligence to know the rules,\u201d but she says she thinks critics are taking discussions of this DQ too far.<\/p>\n \u201cThis mistake is totally different [than his other ones],\u201d she says \u201cI think everyone should be pissed if he had a camera crew out there or if he stole a bib \u2014 if he did the exact same thing that he\u2019s done wrong before. But he did not have those mistakes, he literally made an honest mistake, so this one is just totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a big difference between someone breaking a rule for the first, second or even third time and someone doing it as often or on the same scale as Choi, but Van Der Merwe says there should be no end to the \u201cgrace and forgiveness\u201d that Choi receives, no matter how many times he messes up. This is exactly what people like Mulkey take issue with \u2014 Choi seems to get a pass time after time. <\/p>\n Mulkey \u2014 who, like Choi, has a big platform on social media, with 1.5 million followers on TikTok and another 174,000 on Instagram \u2014 has watched Choi for a while now. He has clocked each of Choi\u2019s mistakes along the way, so he says the DQ in Texas really came as no surprise to him. What he says is surprising, however, is Choi\u2019s excuses for the disqualification.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve gotten a penalty before,\u201d Mulkey says, \u201cand the official told me why I got it and what to do next.\u201d <\/p>\n What to do next, of course, was to go to a penalty tent and serve the time \u2014 part of the process that Choi said he was not aware of during the race. Mulkey even points to a friend who raced 70.3 Texas on Sunday who also happened to get a drafting penalty, just like Choi. <\/p>\n \u201c[The official] pulled up, told me I was too close and said to stop at the next tent,\u201d the athlete says. \u201cI even asked her where the next one was and she told me. But, I mean, it\u2019s a big-ass yellow tent with penalty written on the side. It wasn\u2019t complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Many people seem ready to give Choi one more pass for yet another mistake, but people like Mulkey and Chan ask where it will end \u2014 or if it ever will. <\/p>\n \u201cI just think it\u2019s inevitable that this will happen again,\u201d says Mulkey. \u201cHe will do the same exact thing somewhere else. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but I do think he will do something again, because this is his fourth time. How do you even do that? I\u2019d have to go out of my way to do it that many times.\u201d<\/p>\n Chan says he thinks Choi is capable of growth, but that he needs to redirect his focus a bit if he wants to see actual growth.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think that maybe if we give Matt Choi some grace, we can see that he has confidence,\u201d Chan says. \u201cAnd I think if he channels that energy and that confidence into doing the right thing like doing the homework and learning the rules, there\u2019s a lot of good that can come out of it and a lot less of the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether Choi deserves another chance or not, he is going to get one at some other race down the line. Hopefully 70.3 Texas will be the last controversial result of his career and he will have a wonderful time in triathlon. He may have several DQs and and a few bans on his resume, but he is still a good athlete, and it would be great to see him post some results where the only things people talk about are his final time and his performance, nothing more.<\/p>\n Tags:IRONMAN<\/a>Rules<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Instagram\/mattchoi_6 IRONMAN 70.3 Texas took place in Galveston on Sunday and, in the days since, it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-233015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-02-at-9.50.40-AM.png\")
A shoit of Choi before his first triathlon in early March. Photo: Instagram\/mattchoi_6<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-02-at-9.49.56-AM.png\")
Choi started cycling earlier this year. Photo: Instagram\/mattchoi_6<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/D3CF1922-B8AC-44F7-80A7-EEE646CFB416_L0_001-7_28_2025-12_01_48-PM-783x1024.png\")
Mulkey says he thinks Choi gives content creators and influencers \u201ca bad name.\u201d Photo: Noel Mulkey<\/p>\n