Last year’s fiasco was about a shortage of medals which the Cebu Executive Runners Club (CERC), race organizers of the annual Cebu Marathon, attributed to medal snatching. This year, there were no medals for anyone to snatch.
No-show medals at the finish line? Seems like a small thing. Well, not really. And every runner knows this, including those who chose to minimize the incident and say that runners don’t run for medals, anyway.
If runners don’t run for medals, then why do we join races? We can just run around the city on our own or with our friends and for free. But we choose to pay a fee that we constantly complain about and sign up for a race because we want the race experience. And part of that race experience is receiving a medal at the finish line.
We run for the sense of achievement. We race for the thrill and magic of the experience.
Having a medal placed around your neck after you cross the finish line lifts your spirits, wipes out all the aches and pains in your body, makes all the months of hard training worth it.
The medal seals the moment.
So, do not minimize the medal, the moment or the memory of crossing the finish line and receiving the only extrinsic reward a runner gets from finishing a race by saying runners don’t and shouldn’t run for medals.
Stop saying medals are unimportant. Because they’re not. If medals are so unimportant, then, why give them out, in the first place? Because medals cap an extraordinary feat after long, hard months of training. And that’s why they shouldn’t be given to everyone, only those who finish within the cut-off times.
But once more, all that talk about “preserving the integrity of the race” rang hollow at the Cebu Marathon 2026. Because all who braved the unforgiving queues for hours like desperate typhoon victims waiting for “ayuda” (assistance) received a medal, regardless of time.
But more disappointing than the empty promises was the silence that met runners at the finish line. No signage. No announcement. No news. No staff bothered to meet the runners to relay the sad news. Did race organizers fear our wrath?
Was it really the lack of certainty in the arrival of medals as later claimed by the organizers rather than their lack of courage that caused them to suddenly become incommunicado?
We had to bring out the “Marites” in us to find out the latest. We had to find out via the rumor mill that the medals wouldn’t be ready for distribution till seven o’ clock. I wonder how the foreigners from the 46 countries fared.
Some runners who ran the full marathon that started at 12 midnight chose to go home and rest after finishing the race and while waiting for the clock to strike seven. When they returned, though, race organizers had packed up and left the race venue which would have been perfectly understandable if not for the late-show medals fiasco.
So, once more, runners had to go home, empty-handed, with no medal or explanation for what just happened. With flights to catch, some runners simply went home, dejected and defeated.
No online communication from the race organizers, either. The silence was deafening. The lack of accountability was mortifying.
But this is not just about the medals. This is about so much more. This is about integrity and the lack of it. This is about the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
So, for those waiting to hear about my bleeding knees from which I am recuperating, you’ll have to wait some more. This story is not yet over.
It’s one thing to choose peace, another to allow incompetence, indifference and injustice.