|
Minor hiccups at NUS Biathlon 2007 | ||||
23-year-old NUS student Lin Zhiyuan had a taste of aggressive competitiveness while participating in his first ever biathlon at the NUS Biathlon 2007 held on March 4 at East Coast Park. “With everyone fighting to get to the front, it can get quite aggressive in the water,” he said, referring to the swimming leg of the race. “People are all very packed together, so the moment you try to pull a decent stroke, people will pull you back.” Nadia Abdullah, a 23-year-old NUS Masters student in sociology, echoed Lin’s comments, saying that “it’s different swimming in the sea and in the pool.” “The water is salty and people kick your face and legs,” she explained. “It’s very chaotic!” However, project director Seah Huiren said the event was a success, with everything going “smoothly and according to plan.” “Some participants sent email and reflected that they were happy with the event,” said Seah, a freshman majoring in chemical engineering. He added that the event helpers received special mention because of their enthusiastic cheers to keep the participants going. Royston Huang, a second-year NUS arts undergraduate and a seasoned athlete who has participated in several biathlons, said that NUS Biathlon is “on par with Singapore Biathlon in terms of organising.” Huang participated in the sprint distance men’s closed category. When told of comments made by participants about kicking and overcrowding in the sea, Seah said that such concerns had already been considered while scheduling for the event. “When we planned the waves we did take into account the number of people actually in the sea, so the maximum cap we set for a particular wave was 150,” he explained. A wave is a group of participants competing in the same category which is flagged off at the same time. There may be more than one wave for a category, especially those with more participants.
“I believe we can look into it, maybe try to ensure greater intervals or decreasing the number of people in a wave,” he said of future editions of NUS Biathlon. Other than the problem of overcrowding in the sea, Wayne Sandhu, a third-year NUS engineering undergraduate said there should have been “one or two more water points for the race.” He said it was difficult getting drinking water without having to jostle for it at the water points. He added that some of the cups were knocked over by over-enthusiastic participants eager to get on with the race. “No one holds up water for you and everyone congregates around the table,” he said. “They (the organisers) could have used linear tables instead of square tables.” Seah agreed that linear tables would have been a better choice, stating that the problem of water not being accessible enough could have arisen due to organisers not briefing the helpers in detail. “We’ll look into the problem,” he assured The Observer. This is the first time that the annual event was held at East Coast Park. Seah informed The Observer that the event, which has been around for 10 years, actually started off being held in NUS. “You’ll do the swimming leg in the swimming pool, then continue running around the school compound,” he said. “We only started holding it at Sentosa’s Tanjong Beach 5-6 years ago.” However, this year’s biathlon was not held at Sentosa due to construction work rendering part of the proposed running route inaccessible. Hence, East Coast Park was chosen as the alternative. “They were telling us that they had renovations going on with the integrated resort coming up,” he said. “They did not want us to hold the event (at Sentosa).” With Singapore Biathlon 2007 also being held at East Coast Park on March 17, Seah said his committee was not keen on the proposed alternative because there were concerns that “participant rate would drop with two similar events held at the same location within the space of three weeks.” However, according to him, about 900 of the 1000 or so people who registered for the event still turned up.
|
|||||
Copyright © The Campus Observer 2007  |
