WHAT began as weeks of eager anticipation turned into utter
disappointment and frustration last Saturday for many participants
in the adidas Sundown Marathon.
The shuttle service ferrying the participants was a disaster.
For those who used the service from Pasir Ris, the waiting time was
too long and there were not enough buses to ferry them to the race
site on time. Therefore, several participants missed the start of
the race and began their run late.
To make things worse, those who eventually caught a taxi had to
alight far from the race site and walk at least 5km to the
start/end point at Changi Exhibition Centre.
Among them were half-marathoners and full-marathoners. Imagine
how tired they must have been even before they began their
race.
The 21km race was officially flagged off at 9pm. As a result of
the poor shuttle logistics, the latecomers had to begin their 21km
race at 10pm. But the Land Transport Authority had already
instructed that traffic from the Changi coast side should be open
at 10pm. Hence, the marshals had to redirect these late runners to
turn left from Aviation Park Road.
This caused the latecomers to miss the Changi Coast loop, which
is about 3km long, and they ended up running shorter than the
actual 21km.
Despite this, their finished timings were still recorded and
ranked under the race results for the 21km distance category. The
organiser should have excluded them from the rankings and simply
displayed their timings.
What they did was very unprofessional because these runners were
ranked together with those who had completed the full 21km. And
some of those runners who ran a shorter route obtained a better
rank.
Despite the countless negative feedback by runners on Facebook,
event organiser HiVelocity has yet to respond to any of it
publicly.
I sincerely hope the organiser will take note of these issues
and learn from them instead of sweeping the matter under the
carpet.
Joyce Neo (Ms)
