We Ru(I)N Buenos Aires 2014

[windy]

When a large company like Nike say they are going to arrange a half marathon in Buenos Aires you assume that you are dealing with a serious company that will put on a good show. I booked online along with 10,000 others paying $220 pesos for the privilege of pounding the streets of Buenos Aires. This equates to 2 million 2 hundred thousand pesos. For this Nikes obligation was to close a few streets give every body a t shirt a timing chip and a bottle of Gatorade.
But somebody some where decided that the profit margin was not high enough and that if they were to cull the field of runners they could save a ton of money on t shirts medals and Gatorade.
And that is what they did , they sold 10,000 place yet only 7114 runners made the race. That is 2886 people who just woke up one day and decided to donate $220 pesos to Nike. The people of Buenos Aires are kind like that!. They just love giving money to big corporations and getting nothing in return.
Or maybe they didn't?. The fact is they had your money and an obligation to fulfil but opted instead to cull the list of runners as though it were a Florida electoral register. And with a rejection rate of close to 30% and for any reason they were able to achieve this disgusting rip off.
At every race I have ever run not having a medical cert just meant you signed a disclaimer stating that you did not hold the organisers responsible. Not in this race. In this race it meant no t shirt and no chip.
Having a medical cert but not having the Nike form stamped by a doctor also meant no t shirt and no chip.
Having all of the above but not having a photo copy of the first 2 pages of your identity document also meant rejection. And so this theft continued until they had culled almost 3000 paying customers.
I cannot help but wonder are they now sitting on almost 3000 t shirts that were never issued, in the corner of their office are there boxes of medals that were never given out, or were the t shirts and medals never made in the first place?.
Maybe Nike think that people will just take it and say nothing. Maybe the Argentines will?. After all they are accustomed to crap service, but I am not Argentine and am not willing to let this rip off pass me by without giving my 2 penneth worth.
So despite not having a chip or the official t shirt my friend and I attended the race any way. We showed our receipts of payment to the officials and were told we could not enter the course. We ended up having to jump the fence like thieves in the night to run a race we had paid to enter. The run itself was fine but Nike had one final insult in store for us at the finish line. They had positioned marshalls down the final straight to stop anyone not wearing the official shirt from crossing the finish line. A few choice words from me convinced one marshall that it was not in his interest to try and actually stop me so I made it to the finish line and picked up my $220 peso bottle of Gatorade.
The next step was to try and get my medal. I showed my receipt I explained what had happened but all to no avail. So home I went empty handed.
One of the great things I love about running is getting back home to my twin 6 year old girls and me and my friend putting our medals on them. The next day one of the girls will take my medal to school and tell her friends and teachers that daddy won the race. The first thing they asked after this race was where's the medal?. It made me feel quite sick to be honest and furious enough to write this.

 

[syngirl]

Was this the same Nike race that left thousands of water bottles strewn across the streets of Buenos Aires on Sunday. That was lovely to see on my way out of town. I hope they actually recycle those. All it made me think was wow, what a disgusting lot those runners are, chucking their plastic bottles everywhere. I guess its better than styrofoam but what's the point in running all those races if all it's doig is producing such a disgusting amount of garbage. You want a medal, you can go for a run yourself with a reusable bottle and your daughters can fashion a medal for you to hang around your neck when you get home. The trash left behind by these marathons is disgusting, especially in a city that already has terrible problems with garbage and basically no recycling -- like they need even more garbage to deal with.

 

[windy]

After the runners have gone through all the bottles are cleaned up. Its the same in every city in the world not just Buenos Aires. As I was driving home I saw the bottles being cleared up.
21km I a long distance and you take on liquid at many stages. Nobody is expected to carry several plastic bottles or paper cups all the ay to the finish line.
You are clearly not a runner.

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

Hi Windy,

I'm assuming the instructions for registering included getting a medical certificate, having the form stamped by a doctor, and that you must be wearing the official t-shirt to run? I am a speed skater and runner and most of the races I've entered here have something similar. It's a pia but is just the way they do it. You also need a med cert to even join a group to train.

Having to wear some t-shirt that is not my normal running or skating shirt frankly pisses me off. I have gear I like. But I think it is part of the parochial culture. I'm not accustomed to having someone tell me what I can wear or not wear.

If it helps any, here's a pic of some of my medals. The two really, really, really small and cheap ones - top left and bottom right - are the ones I've gotten at races here. The rest were gotten in the US.

 

[GS_Dirtboy]

Was this the same Nike race that left thousands of water bottles strewn across the streets of Buenos Aires on Sunday.

Those bottles are recycled. Buenos Aires has a very robust recycling program.

Also, many races are run to raise money for charities like Cancer research, Leukemia, Alzheimer, and Aspergers. Not sure about BsAs, but I run the Philly Marathon every year. It is usually cold at the start so runners are bundled up. Once the race gets going they shed their outer layers and toss these clothes along the course. These clothes are then picked up, washed, and donated to the homeless.

 

[DontMindMe]

You did not state whether Nike in any way made these requirements known beforehand. You make it sound like they didn't, but you also don't outright say that they didn't. So tell us, did 3000 people show up and get turned away due to surprise requirements announced upon arrival, or did 3000 people simply show up unprepared because they didn't, say, read the web site carefully? How did the ~7000 others know what they needed to bring?

Having worked in events and online marketing here, I can tell you from experience that trying to get Argentines to voluntarily go to a web site and absorb event information from it can feel like pulling teeth. Many still want an e-mail in their inbox, or to be able to pick up the phone to call and ask questions. Getting information from a web site is not the preferred method, I believe, due to the fact that so many Argentine businesses either simply don't have a web site or they just never update it. The information is not seen as reliable. People are very old school with that kind of stuff here. Internet usage is high in Argentina (Google opened up shop here for a reason), but people here use it differently. So I can't help but wonder if Nike simply didn't know this market well enough and screwed up its own event as a result by burying the requirements under the fifth question in the FAQ section (I got curious and Googled, see link below). Or maybe their team down here is just a mess. That web site is a disaster and my eye is twitching just looking at it.

https://www.werunbuenosaires.com/faq

As GS_Dirtboy said, those requirements are nothing out of the ordinary down here, but putting that info where they did was a mistake. I don't have a DNI, so I don't know if having to copy the first two pages is the norm. They didn't specify that, or having to have a separate Nike form with a doctor's stamp along with the doctor's note. I would have organized the information on the web site differently, sent a confirmation e-mail to each runner upon registration with a complete and detailed list of everything required and sent a reminder e-mail blast before the event with the same info again, but that's just me.

Would this be a PR problem for Nike elsewhere? Yes, because people would complain. Here? LOL. Infobae thinks all 10,000 ran it: http://www.infobae.com/2014/06/08/1571149-diez-mil-corredores-poblaron-las-calles-portenas-el-debut-del-we-run-buenos-aires-21k

 

[windy]

Many races say you need a medical cert. The Buenos Aires half and full marathon for example. Then they just ask you to sign a disclaimer if you don't have one.
Many people had medical certs but did not have the nike form stamped by their doctor so were rejected. My friend had the cert but did not have a photo copy of the first 2pages is DNI so was rejected. 3000 people did not just decide to donate over 600,000 pesos to Nike.

 

[windy]

PS Thank you dirt Boy but I already lots and lots of medals from other races that I have run with out an problems.

 

[Redpossum]

Windy, you have my sympathies. You got ripped off, and it sucks, period, full stop, no excuses for Nike doing this. The unsympathetic comments above, trying to excuse Nike for doing this to you, are sadly typical of these forums.

Can we now revisit my earlier comments about huge international corporations being evil, and the endless ridicule that I received for this? Seems to me this incident is a good example of what I was talking about.

 

[DontMindMe]

Many races say you need a medical cert. The Buenos Aires half and full marathon for example. Then they just ask you to sign a disclaimer if you don't have one.
Many people had medical certs but did not have the nike form stamped by their doctor so were rejected. My friend had the cert but did not have a photo copy of the first 2pages is DNI so was rejected. 3000 people did not just decide to donate over 600,000 pesos to Nike.

Why don't you complain about this elsewhere if you believe you have a leg to stand on? The higher-ups at Nike aren't reading what you're writing here. There's an e-mail for the the event as well as the e-mail for the press contact on the event web site. A phone number, too. That would be a good start. But I will tell you that if you lead with "Every other race has let me run without the medical cert," they're probably going to ignore you. I've been on the other end of those phone calls and e-mails and nine times out of ten it's an Argentine with an empty threat yelling about reporting you to the Defensa del Consumidor for some completely imaginary offense, hoping you'll give them some sort of consolation prize just to make them go away. "I showed up and no one was there, I'm going to report you!" "It's next week, you read the date wrong." "I'm going to report you unless you give me X, Y and two Zs!!" I'm not making this stuff up.

Try leading with what they actually did wrong, not with what you feel you did right. And no, I'm not a Nike apologist and I question the reading comprehension of anyone who thinks I'm making excuses for them. I was actually quite critical of the way they displayed the information on their web site. But I'm being realistic about your chances at fighting this. You decided to simply ignore a requirement for the Nike race, the first-ever Nike race in BA, assuming it would be like others. I don't know if Nike purposefully tried to rip people off or not, but having briefly clicked around the web site, I can tell you that I would have been allowed to run the race that day had I signed up. Everything is there (including the form for the doctor), it's just very poorly organized. The only thing I am still wondering about is the two pages of the DNI thing, and funny, you're not answering me on whether that's the norm or not.