No refund for adidas' King of the Road cancellation

SINGAPORE — The 2013 Singapore adidas King of the Road (KOTR) running event was cancelled this morning (Aug 11) due to bad weather, with race organisers saying the “difficult decision” was made “so as not to compromise on our participants’ safety”. “The team assessed the weather and road conditions during three different parts of the morning and decided to take the necessary safety precautions during a thunderstorm,” the statement from organisers HiVelocity read. “The well-being and safety of our participants, volunteers and supporters have always been our foremost concern.” About 7,000 people signed up for the 16.8km KOTR run while another 4,000 had registered for the 10km run. The KOTR is a five-leg running championship held from July to October. The five countries hosting a 16.8km leg each are the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The Philippines leg was held on July 7. The top performer across all the legs will be declared the overall winner. According to an adidas spokesman, the race organisers had waited until the last minute before deciding to pull the plug on the race held in the Marina Bay area. “We thought of delaying the 16.8km race and holding it at the same time as the 10km race in the hope that the rain would stop by then. We also communicated this to the participants three times this morning,” said the spokesman. “But the rain continued, and there was lightning and thunder, and so we had to cancel it.” The KOTR will not be rescheduled to another date either because of “logistical and operational issues”. Said the spokesman: “Unlike the haze situation a few months back which caused events to be cancelled in advanced and postponed to a later date, today’s bad weather was unforeseen and as such, we are unable to organise a new race in its place. “The KOTR legs in Thailand (Sept 8), Indonesia (Sept 29) and Malaysia (Oct 20) will go on as planned, and we will still declare the winners of the KOTR at the end of the Malaysia leg.” However, there will be no refunds to participants of the Singapore leg. “It is stated in the terms and conditions when the runners sign up that there will not be any refunds if the event is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, and the runners have been made aware of this from the start,” said the spokesman. The organisers will be sending the medals of participation to all registered runners as a token of their participation. They have also invited participants to contact them at info [at] hivelocity.com.sg if they have any further queries. Running enthusiast Adrian Eng, 42 - who paid $50 to take part as a returning participant from the 2012 event - said that the weather was bad in the early morning but felt that the rain turned to light-medium towards 7.30am He would have preferred it if the KOTR was run despite the weather but also understood the organisers' safety concerns. "I think they were erring far on the side of caution and didnt want to risk anyone slipping and falling," he said. "It would have been nice to run because the weather would have been so much cooler, unlike last year when it was so hot."I suspect that they also probably had the roads closed up to a certain time so if they had started the race later, that would have been a problem." Meanwhile, the inaugural Kranji Countryside Run went ahead this morning despite the bad weather, with more than 80 per cent of registered runners turning up.