"Biggest Loser" producers say: "We apologize"

UPDATED to include Dane Patterson's apology.

A followup to my Thursday story about the fabricated account of "Biggest Loser" eliminee Dane Patterson running a marathon, when in fact he only ran 23 miles: The producers of "The Biggest Loser" are taking full responsibility for the misrepresentation.

Here's the apology put out late Thursday night by Reveille, the company behind "TBL":

"As the Executive Producers of 'The Biggest Loser' we would like to make an official apology and set the record straight with regards to the claim in last night's episode that Dane completed a marathon in Arizona.

"After seeing on various online blogs that this information may be inaccurate we investigated the claim and found that Dane had not indeed completed the marathon unaided. From our internal investigation we learned that Dane ran the first 17 miles before receiving a ride from the field producer for 3 miles before rejoining the race at the 20 mile mark whereupon he completed the race.

"We are incredibly proud of Dane for running 23 miles and losing over 130 lbs on his weight loss journey so far and wish him luck as he continues his new healthy lifestyle. We have also taken the necessary action to ensure that there is no future misrepresentations and sincerely apologize for misleading our loyal viewers and it was certainly not our intent but an unwitting mistake.

"We hope they will continue to be inspired and motivated by all of our contestants and follow them as they continue to change their lives."

Update 6:18 pm: This from Dane Patterson. He actually did finish the race, in a manner:

"I always intended to run the full marathon. At the 17th mile, I knew I would not make it in time to cross the finish line before it closed at 6 hours, so I then received a ride from the field producer, who wanted to show me crossing the finish line. He drove me for three miles, and then I ran the rest of the way. After all the filming was done I went back and finished the last 3 miles later that day with my wife and cousin Blaine. I apologize for stating that I ran the entire marathon before I actually ran the whole 26 miles. I am proud of the feat of just running 26 miles in one day."

My thoughts ...

The word "internal investigation" tells me that someone didn't tell someone that Dane had been picked up at the 23-mile mark, and so a little visual fib became a big lie in the eyes of the blogosphere. (Though it was an unrelated screwup, whoever shaved two hours off Dane's supposed finish time didn't help things.) I believe the commenter whose wife was an eyewitness to the tail end of the marathon, and who said that had Dane not been filmed crossing the finish line when he was, by the time he'd completed 26.2 miles there wouldn't have been a finish line, because the race officials would have packed up and gone home.

(Update: Let me rephrase that, since a runner pointed me to the race results which clearly show laggards being counted. Rather than getting sidetracked on a discussion of whether Dane's race time would have counted or not -- it appears it would have -- let's stay with the main point: Someone at Reveille decided to cut corners and came up with a justification for it. And I can still see where they were coming from. But clearly, and everyone agrees on this, it was a bad call.)

At any rate, it sounds like Dane is planning to run another marathon in April, which would be one more than I've run.