The essence of an FKT is that there’s a track and then a fastest known time without assistance on that track. It doesn’t matter who created the track. If it’s been made public it’s out there for all. Nor does it matter who maintains the website for it or what they think the rules should be or whatever damned gatekeeping or idiosyncratic sense of purity motivates them. Those are all irrelevant.
As for what counts as “without assistance,” my view is that the community of racers and fans together get a say in that, in that we hear about a performance and we react to it. If someone claims the FKT and is revealed to have taken a train or a shortcut or got pushed up the mountain, we’d say “hell no, that’s not an FKT, that’s cheating, that’s supported, that’s not in the spirit of things.”
So, what about having media present? Or having your wife take photos here and there along the way? That’s not cheating in my book nor do I think it is in virtually anyone’s. I watch plenty of sport contests and in no way is spectating or the infrastructure to enable spectating thought to be cheating. Many people who have a problem with Lael’s performance reference John’s rules, as if the rules that we are to accept to treat a ride as an FKT are handed to us as a mandate that obligates us. Nope. And without the arbitrary crutch of the rules, I see few people willing to straight up say that Lael cheated. Because that’s absurd.
Okay, so what about the small conceptual space for saying that the ride is not cheating, but it’s still “supported” (and is therefore less deserving of the label FKT than an “unsupported” ride).
The people who claim that you get an advantage from media or from loved ones being present haven’t given the slightest bit of evidence that that’s the case. Because no such evidence can be given. “Advantage” and “disadvantage” in the realm of psychology is so elusive, contextual, and idiosyncratic that it’s useless to try to deploy them within our concept of support. Compare with: “x had support because he has a new baby coming in a month and he’s joyful.” Or, “x had support because for most of the race there was a racer in front of them, and the psychology of being a chaser is favorable.” Or, “x had support because she was out front, and the psychology of staying ahead of the pack is favorable.” Look, any of those might be true or they might not be, but assessing a performance doesn’t appeal to those factors in our intuitions about support because we recognize that they are indeterminable and incommensurable.
So what’s going on? Lael has been especially triggering to bros for a long time. Something about her “honestly, I don’t give a shit about your little club” attitude, plus that she’s a she, plus now that she has a wife, add in some Rapha hate. And you get the irresistible lure to find something that diminishes her achievements.
A lot of people do these races in a dirt bag way and they want to protect that and get credit for it. That’s understandable but irrelevant to an FKT. Some people probably worry that allowing media will create an arms race of people inviting cameras to the event, and ultimately the whole thing will get shut down. That’s probably a legitimate concern but also irrelevant to an FKT.
To me it’s plain as frikken day that Lael has the FKT on the Arizona Trail.