It was around March this year when I first heard that The Performance Series (TPS) – Singapore, organised by Just Run Lah, was calling for runners to share inspiring running stories about themselves as part of their #TranscendYourself campaign. 

The race organisers had apparently wanted to know whether running has helped us mentally, physically, socially or emotionally.

The carrot had been a S$1,000 cash prize for the candidate who became the Most Inspirational ambassador.

They had termed this as “The TPS Ambassadors” contest. (See below). 

There was nothing to lose by participating in the contest and at the same time I could get a chance to win S$1,000, so I decided to submit my personal story about my transformation from a couch potato to a marathoner and ultra-runner.

I found out that my entry to the contest had been shortlisted on 13 May, along with the stories of four other runners – including Brian Tey, Malobika Pramanick and Arrow Chan.

Readers who were inspired by our stories were encouraged to submit their votes. The candidate who had finished with the most votes and inspired the most people to run by the closing date of 30 September, would win the S$1,000 cash prize.

So the shortlisted participants, including myself, began to rally for votes, encouraging our friends and family members to vote for us, and at the same time, trying to get our stories out there and inspire others similarly, too.

For the next four and a half months, we put in a lot of work to rally for votes and to try and inspire others with our running stories.

By the end of the contest, on 1 October, I had the most number of votes, at 6,256.

In second place had been Arrow Chan, with about 3,400 votes.

Shortly after, TPS took down all the webpages linked to The TPS Ambassadors contest. Our individual pages, together with the contest home page and the terms & conditions of the contest, were all simply removed.

One week later, there was still no mention of the winners on the Facebook page of The Performance Series.

So I enquired on their Facebook page about when the winners would be announced and I got the following message from the organisers. 

When I tried probing for any reasons on why the contest had been cancelled – especially after the closing date and the winners had emerged, there was no response from TPS.

It is one thing to close a contest before the end date, and I can accept it. But TPS cancelled a contest lasting four and a half months and withdrew the prize money of S$1,000 after the end of the closing date.

As an analogy of this, it is like having the winner of TPS Series stranded on stage because the contest has been cancelled after finished running the race and there’s no prize for the winner to collect.

As a token prize, each entrant will now get S$100 CompressSport vouchers, a medal hanger and the waiving of our past registration fees to TPS.

I wonder who will get the S$1,000 in the end?