Firstly organise an event, collect the registration fees, sell merchandise, offer cars as prize that have ridiculous prerequisite conditions to win, gather numerous sponsors, get Singapore Athletics Association to sanction the half marathon, make sure the route goes thru stairways, narrow footpath and finally a missing 3 km.
Then blame an unknown external consultant for everything and apologise profusely.
Should not the Police or Singapore Athletics Association investigate?
S’pore Yolo Run 2017 made runners feel like they were really only living once
Race badly organised, plenty of complaints on social media.
By Belmont Lay |
November 11, 2017
The Yolo Run 2017 was held in Singapore on Nov. 11, 2017.
And according to runners who took part, it sucked. Big time.
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Complaints
There were three categories for the race: 21km, 10km and 5km.
Registration fees were S$68, S$58 and S$48 respectively. It is S$10 cheaper if signed up as an early bird.
The race was scheduled to start at 5am on Saturday morning.
But according to runners, everything did not go as planned right from the start.
Here is a list of what went wrong at Yolo Run 2017, according to gripes shared on the event’s official Facebook page and various other posts online:
1. The race pack collection was two hours long.
2. Dubbed one of the worst runs ever organised in Singapore, the race village itself was poorly set up with insufficient lights.
3. Half marathon flag-off was delayed between 50 minutes and one hour. Race started close to 6am instead. Runners were not informed what was holding it up.
4. There were bottlenecks and congestion throughout the running route.
5. Runners were going in opposite directions as well.
6. At the 4km mark, runners had to climb a flight of stairs.
7. A half marathon is 21.1km, but those with GPS found out that they ran close to 21.6km, some 500 metres more. This affected professional runners’ timings.
8. The 10km race was not properly measured out. It turned out to be only about 7km. This was after one runner completed the supposed 10km distance in 24 minutes. The world record for a 10km run is 26 minutes and 17 seconds.
9. This is particularly worrying as the half marathon distance was apparently measured and sanctioned by Singapore Athletics.
10. Runners were seen falling over one another in the initial stages of the race as there were sharp corners to navigate but the group had not broken up yet.
11. The run was slowed down for many runners as there were too many people on too narrow routes. Routes were mainly pedestrian walkways, when marathons typically make use of outer-most lanes on roads.
12. At times, runners were made to run on the road without marshals towards oncoming traffic.
13. Hydration points ran out of cups.
14. Hydration points were set up on one side even as runners were going in the opposite direction, causing pile-ups.
15. Entire 1.5-litre bottles of water were handled out to runners who took a sip and naturally no other runner after that wanted to drink out of the same receptacle.
16. Bag collection took a few hours, reportedly up to three hours.
17. Bags were left outside the tent in the open.
Then blame an unknown external consultant for everything and apologise profusely.
Should not the Police or Singapore Athletics Association investigate?
S’pore Yolo Run 2017 made runners feel like they were really only living once
Race badly organised, plenty of complaints on social media.
By Belmont Lay |
The Yolo Run 2017 was held in Singapore on Nov. 11, 2017.
And according to runners who took part, it sucked. Big time.
Advertisement
Complaints
There were three categories for the race: 21km, 10km and 5km.
Registration fees were S$68, S$58 and S$48 respectively. It is S$10 cheaper if signed up as an early bird.
The race was scheduled to start at 5am on Saturday morning.
But according to runners, everything did not go as planned right from the start.
Here is a list of what went wrong at Yolo Run 2017, according to gripes shared on the event’s official Facebook page and various other posts online:
1. The race pack collection was two hours long.
2. Dubbed one of the worst runs ever organised in Singapore, the race village itself was poorly set up with insufficient lights.
3. Half marathon flag-off was delayed between 50 minutes and one hour. Race started close to 6am instead. Runners were not informed what was holding it up.
4. There were bottlenecks and congestion throughout the running route.
5. Runners were going in opposite directions as well.
6. At the 4km mark, runners had to climb a flight of stairs.
7. A half marathon is 21.1km, but those with GPS found out that they ran close to 21.6km, some 500 metres more. This affected professional runners’ timings.
8. The 10km race was not properly measured out. It turned out to be only about 7km. This was after one runner completed the supposed 10km distance in 24 minutes. The world record for a 10km run is 26 minutes and 17 seconds.
9. This is particularly worrying as the half marathon distance was apparently measured and sanctioned by Singapore Athletics.
10. Runners were seen falling over one another in the initial stages of the race as there were sharp corners to navigate but the group had not broken up yet.
11. The run was slowed down for many runners as there were too many people on too narrow routes. Routes were mainly pedestrian walkways, when marathons typically make use of outer-most lanes on roads.
12. At times, runners were made to run on the road without marshals towards oncoming traffic.
13. Hydration points ran out of cups.
14. Hydration points were set up on one side even as runners were going in the opposite direction, causing pile-ups.
15. Entire 1.5-litre bottles of water were handled out to runners who took a sip and naturally no other runner after that wanted to drink out of the same receptacle.
16. Bag collection took a few hours, reportedly up to three hours.
17. Bags were left outside the tent in the open.
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