Race Director's Review

Dear race participants,

Thank you for participating in the SAAB City Duathlon. As a Triathlete myself, I understand the amount of training and effort you take to prepare for a race and salute you for your spirit. It is our goal to provide you with the best possible race experience in spite of whatever challenges that come our way.

As the Race Director, I'm concerned about some of the feedback gathered after the event and regret to learn about the inconvenience or confusion incurred during the race. As such, I'll like to give my unreserved apology and provide you with a review for your understanding.

Shorter Bike Route
The original bike route for the full duathlon (40km) and half duathlon (20km) required participants to complete 5 loops and 2 loops respectively. However, we discovered discrepancies at the bike route junction between Marina Boulevard and Marina Mall (Pls refer to Bike Route Map). Despite deploying 4 marshalls, who had effectively directed the earlier Junior Duathlon and Half Duathlon (16-19 yrs) category races, we experienced difficulties in the later categories.

Our review showed that due to the affected route being only partially closed to support continual operation of the Marina Pier, the gaps between cones used to barricade the junction allowed the lead pack of the 4th Wave to miss their left turn towards Marina Mall and go straight ahead towards Marina Pier.

This resulted in numerous cyclists following the lead pack and as it was deemed too dangerous to redirect the cyclists and unfair to disqualify the many cyclists who had missed their checkpoint in Marina Mall, a judgement call was made to stay with this "modified" route which resulted in a shortened bike route.

To support this decision, we briefed the marshalls to provide the consistent message that cyclists were to only complete 5 loops and 2 loops.

Through our efforts, we are glad to announce no cyclist went through the planned 8km loop which provided some level of consistency. For the full Duathlon a total of 80.25% of the participants managed to complete the race based on the 5 laps (22km) which we subsequently adopted as the official bike distance. In the Corporate Relay a total of 93.46% of the participants managed to complete the race based on the 2 laps (10km) which we again adopted as the official bike distance.

In the evaluation of our race management, we would like to apologize and highlight areas where we were deficient:

• Failure to anticipate the route challenges as a result of heavy construction work in the area.

• Failure to anticipate over a hundred construction workers breaching our bike route on their way to work.

• Ineffective marshalling

• Inadequate route signage

To ensure that such incidents do not occur again, we also commit ourselves to these improvements:

• More prominent road signages

• Effective marshalling

• Greater clarity in lap count

• Greater clarity in E-briefing as well as the route map

• More in depth engagement of other stakeholder in the area

• Review on the usage of Marina Bay area as a venue for future races until construction is nearing completion

On another note, may I take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for their kind support. To all the volunteers who made the effort to support the race, thank you very much. Without your support such mass participation events would not be possible.

Once again, we thank you for taking part in the SAAB City Duathlon, and sincerely apologise for all inconvenience caused during the event. Your feedback is important to us, and we hope that you give us the opportunity to deliver an improved race in the future. .

Yours Sincerely

COL LAM SHIU TONG
Race Director

BACK TO HOME PAGE | RACE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTS | RACE DIRECTOR'S REVIEW