Boston Marathon Runners Stop to Help Collapsed Competitor Finish

About 1,000 feet from the finish line on Boylston Street, Ajay Haridasse collapsed again and again as Aaron Beggs and Robson De Oliveira stopped their own races to get him upright and moving. The three men crossed the line together in a scene that drew praise not for speed, but for a decision that put sportsmanship ahead of the stopwatch.

Haridasse, a 21-year-old Northeastern University student and distance captain for Northeastern Club Running, had been fighting severe cramping, exhaustion and dehydration when he fell on the stretch between Dartmouth and Exeter streets. Beggs, who is from Northern Ireland, and De Oliveira, who is from Brazil, stepped in after Haridasse could not continue on his own. Haridasse finished in 2:44:32.

The episode landed on the same day as the 130th Boston Marathon, held Monday, April 20, 2026, when John Korir of Kenya won the men’s race in a course-record 2:01:52 and Sharon Lokedi of Kenya repeated as women’s champion. Marcel Hug won the men’s wheelchair race for the ninth time, and Eden Rainbow-Cooper won the women’s wheelchair race. Against that backdrop of elite times and championship results, the final yards of Haridasse’s race offered a different measure of achievement.

Haridasse said the help from Beggs and De Oliveira may have preserved his chance to qualify for next year’s Boston Marathon, which he hopes to run again. Without them, he said, he would not have qualified. Two days later, he was back on his feet and back at his co-op at New Balance headquarters in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Beggs said he acted on instinct and called helping natural, adding that “it’s nice to be nice.” De Oliveira said he stopped because he believed that if someone else stopped for him, he would do the same. Scott Simon described their generosity as its own kind of “personal best,” a fitting rebuke to the win-at-all-costs culture that so often hangs over endurance sports. The result was not a podium finish or a record time, but a public reminder that some of the most important moments in mass sporting events are the ones that resist the logic of winning at all costs.