The wife of Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley forged her Boston Marathon registration number so she could run the run alongside her tech-mogul husband, the red-faced couple admitted Friday.
Outrage grew so intense on social media that Crowley was forced to step in on behalf of his wife, fashion blogger Chelsa Crowley.
“Yes, using a duplicate number to get Chelsa into the starting Corral was wrong,” he said in a statement. “I don’t expect everyone to understand our strong need to run and finish together — but after trying unsuccessfully to get a charity number and trying unsuccessfully to officially transfer a number from an injured-runner friend, we did what we could to make sure we could run together in hopes of finishing together.”
Crowley got nailed after steamed marathoner Kathy Brown told ABC that she got her bib by registering as a charity representative — but was stunned to see Crowley wearing her digits in photos of the race on an official website.
“I opened it up looking for pictures of me, and there were some in there and they came out really good — but then I saw this other woman,” she said. “It was pretty easy to figure out that someone just made a fake bib. I put that work in and it wasn’t fair that someone else didn’t have to do that. That was my first thought.”
Crowley did little to shield herself from detection — and even scrawled her Twitter handle on her bib in pictures from the race. She later tweeted, “shh!!” after being asked whether the bib was fake before getting overrun with criticism.
The Foursquare founder explained in a blog post that his wife finished last year’s race before the first bomb exploded but he was unable to. He was automatically allowed to take part in this year’s marathon but his wife couldn’t grab a spot.
Crowley apologized to Brown personally in an e-mail.
“Our intent was never to ‘steal’ anything from anyone — our intent was to finish the Boston Marathon together as we tried to do last year,” Crowley said.
“Again, sincerest apologies to anyone we offended or disrespected, including the [Boston Athletic Association] and the police/fire/EMT crews that worked so hard to make sure Monday’s race was safe for all runners,” he wrote.
Cops vowed to crack down on bib forgery after last year’s terror attack that took the lives of three people.
Chelsa Crowley did not return a call for comment.