This isn't being presented as "news", whatever that even means. I think you should reflect on what you're looking for from the world - I would consider this kind of work a form of art, and one I very much appreciate. You don't have to appreciate it, but you're asking it to be some other thing you'd rather have - raw facts and data, summarized into as few words as possible
Some of us would rather the world still have some art
It made me think of that classic Rumsfeld line: "There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact." http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/donald_rumsfeld_...
People who cheat multiple marathons are rare.
People who go as far as to invent a marathon, and to create fake runners for that fake marathon, are very rare.
The article isn't about how or why a man cheats. It's about a man who cheats; and everyone knows that man cheats; and yet he still maintains his innocence; and so he still hasn't "had his comeuppance yet".
The problem is that when you see a long piece in a respected magazine on a subject that you are interested in, it's hard to decide at some point that all the rest is garbage, and put it down.
I started reading this story expecting a tale of a middle-aged dentist who transformed himself into a remarkable marathon runner. Pretty quickly, the story veered into a tale of cheating. I could see there is another 30 pages left to go, and kept wondering what I'd learn about. A secretive group of marathon cheaters who jet around the country and subvert race after race? A group of vigilante marathoners who help bring them to justice? Maybe Kip Litton's whole life is a lie, and he is not a dentist, but a spy from Gondwana? Maybe we at least get some fascinating psychological portraits painted by the masters of investigative journalism?
No, in the end, it's a pile of boring and irrelevant details. "At 7:34 the next morning, Joe Blow leaned over his model M keyboard, and, with keystrokes echoing crisply through his split colonial house, posted a message to the forum revealing that he has a photo of Litton at the 10K timing mat". Ok, that's not a quote, but the article is very much like that. In the end, Kip Litton is indeed a dentist from somewhere in Michigan, who for some unfathomable reason decided to start cheating at marathon races for amateurs. And that's it. Nobody knows why, and in some cases, we don't know how. This is a 10,000 word article in a major magazine. 30 to 40 printed pages. Come on. I have just as much right to express my disappointment, as the New Yorker has to print this nonsense in the first place.
I shared the article with a few other non-HN people into running and they thought it was an interesting story as well.
The only truly interesting detail would be the method by which he cheated, which the reporter, at long last, admits that nobody has figured out. This leaves the possibility that other people are cheating the same way, although maybe less brazenly. Again, this could be summarized in a line (it's clear that he cheated, the method is difficult to figure out). What is this, a slow news year?