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Sundown Marathon comes under fire after delays in race pack collection

SINGAPORE – It is touted as Asia’s largest night run, but the 10th edition of the OSIM Sundown Marathon has drawn flak from race participants just days ahead of Saturday’s flag-off at the F1 Pit Building.

SINGAPORE – It is touted as Asia’s largest night run, but the 10th edition of the OSIM Sundown Marathon has drawn flak from race participants just days ahead of Saturday’s flag-off at the F1 Pit Building.

Runners who had signed up for the event had taken to the event’s official Facebook page to voice their unhappiness over the delays in the collection of their race packs, which started at the Pit Building on Tuesday (March 21) at 4.30pm.

According to the complaints posted online, a number of them had been made to queue outdoors for over two hours outdoors to collect their race packs, which included a goodie bag, race singlet, race bib and timing chip. Some runners who went to the designated collection machines at shopping malls were also left frustrated after the machines ran out of shirts and sizes.

While the Sundown Marathon race pack collection was previously held at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, event organiser HiVelocity Events decided to switch the collection to the F1 Pit Building this year as part of its five-day Sundown Night Festival.

However, delays in the race pack collection on Tuesday and Wednesday saw participants posting over 200 negative comments on the event’s Facebook page.

“Worst race pack collection ever…Never had to queue for Sundown race pack collection for the past two years,” said a participant, Nicholas Chan, on Facebook.

“This year I queued for almost three hours! This is insane. Why was the process changed when it was working perfectly fine?”

June Wang added: “I queued for one hour under the hot sun…in the end I left empty-handed because I was rushing to pick up my kids. This year (it) seems so disorganised!”

Another participant who identified himself as Andy said: “I was really angry last evening after queuing for more than one hour on muddy ground. It doesn’t make sense to open only 10 counters.

“The staff took their time to walk around searching for things to put into the bag and printed the tag at the last minute. Sundown has always been one of my favourite events and I am really very disappointed with your arrangements this time.”

Eva Lim also took to Facebook to vent her frustrations after she was unable to collect her race singlet at the designated machine at OneKM shopping mall. She said: “Your machine at the shopping mall has run out of tees early in the morning. It doesn’t have my size and you can’t choose other options.

“Didn’t you know to replenish (stock) last night? It’s unacceptable. This debacle has to stop, imagine the overseas runners seeing how things are run, it’s embarrassing.”

Adrian Mok, founder of the Sundown Marathon, and managing director of HiVelocity, posted an apology to runners on the event’s Facebook page on Thursday morning.

“I would like to apologise for the long waiting time to collect your race pack yesterday and today.

“Our team was introducing a new system to facilitate the collection process. However, our system and plan was unable to handle the load, resulting in a long waiting time.

“I am aware of all your concerns and assure you that my team is working hard to solve the problem.”

Mok also explained that they had decided to print race bibs on demand as it “reduces bulk printing wastage and allows runners to register the day before the race”, and that it was also in line with their partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to encourage environmental sustainability.

The race founder also promised that improvements would be made to help ease race pack collection for participants on Thursday (March 23) and Friday (March 24). These included increasing the number of collection counters – which will be sorted by race category – upping the number of counter staff, and pre-printing of the remaining uncollected race bibs.

Mok added: “We will learn from this experience and organise a better race in 2018. I seek your understanding and patience with our volunteers, service providers and staff. This team is working very hard to resolve the issue.”

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