3rd Annual SBR.ph Awards | FAQ | What You Need To Know
“Good ideas come when you’re stuck in traffic!”. That’s what we said when we thought of doing an annual recognition awards for the local triathlon community. As usual, we had our doubts, “but who would pay attention to it? the triathlon community is so small!”, we answered our own question with our usual just-do-it line. “build it, they will come” and “if you don’t do it, someone else will!”
Now on its third year, the Annual SBR.ph Awards is now the biggest and longest running awards ceremony dedicated to our ever growing endurance community. Our vision for the SBR.ph Awards remains to same, and that is to give recognition to our local athletes who train and race their hearts out. We want to help the athletes who make racing as their bread and butter, become household names. Working here in our country and trying to make a living is hard enough, if we can help our athletes train and perform better by exposing them to the community, which in turn, allows them to get more sponsors, then we’ve done our jobs.
Over the years, we’ve expanded the SBR.ph Awards into 20 categories and also made changes along the way. Like for this year, we’ve separated the race of the year category into two divisions. The big one (>500 participants) and the small (<500 participants). Is it the best way? Probably not, but its a good start. Our goal is to also give the smaller races a chance to shine in the spotlight. Which we hope, will give them more exposure and get more participants in their future races. We’ll try to keep on improving so please feel free to send us your comments and suggestions via the comments section below or emailing us at [email protected]
For obvious purposes, we didn’t include any of our own races (Aquaman, Duaman, and Triman), but we’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who nominated them for race of the year.
So what’s this post all about? Now, this is the part where it gets interesting. Instead of answering the questions sent to us one by one, we’ve decided to answer everything all in one post. :) If you have more questions about the awards, kindly hit us up and we’ll answer it here as well! Time to do a little q and a :)
1) How did you end up with the nominees?
– The tributes, err, nominees, were nominated by the triathlon community (or SBR.ph nation as we like to call them). For a period of two weeks, we opened up the nominations page, users submitted their entries to us via the online nomination form. We then collated the top 5 with the most number of nominees. If in case there was a tie for the 5th slot, we made our decision on who to include based on the user’s answer to “reason for nomination”. Just to be clear, we were subjective and tried to be really fair as possible.
2) How come there are only 3 nominees to the Male Rookie of Year?
– There were only three tributes, err, nominees, because some nominated athletes who’s been racing for over 5 years now. We had to verify each submitted nominee and asked them how long they have been racing (first triathlon of rookie of the year for the 3rd Annual SBR.ph Awards must be within 2013), and ended up with only 3 participants. We cannot re-open the nomination period anymore so we ended up with three very deserving athletes.
3) How come you don’t have judges? Won’t this become a popularity contest?
– Yes, the popularity of each tribute, err, nominee, will play a factor. But as with our previous SBR.ph Awards, we’re glad, that in the end, the right nominee won. We decided not to get a panel of judges because as cool as that may sound, it was simply impossible to find a judge who’s not connected (personal or professional) to a specific nominee. Our triathlon community is still really small. Like for example, if we get this respectable coach to be one of the judges, what if he/she is nominated for coach of the year? What if their athlete is nominated for age group and rookie of the year? What if their team is nominated for team of the year? The list goes on and on and in the end, we decided to do it the way every country votes for their President and how the American Idol and The Voice (Yey! Tessanne Chin!) chooses its winner. Which is via public voting. Again, it may not be the best one, but we have faith in the SBR.ph nation that in the end, they’ll be able to set aside biases and vote for who truly deserves it best. The power is in your hands SBR.ph nation! So vote wisely and make those votes count!
At the end of the day, we strongly believe that being nominated alone at the SBR.ph Awards, makes you a winner already.
4) How do you count the votes?
– Since we now live in a very hi tech world where we’re surrounded by gadgets that makes our lives so much easier, we count the votes manually =P. Armed with a manila paper, boxes of pizza and sodas, and a couple of pentle pens, we go thru EVERY email and tally all the votes. Yep, we don’t use the infamous PCOS machine as that machine is very prone to cheating.
5) What if I want to confirm if the vote tally is really accurate!?
– Like what we’ve been saying since the 1st Annual SBR.ph Awards, if anyone wants to confirm/recount the votes, you’re most welcome to do so. Feel free to come here in our office (my room basically :P) and we’ll show you all the emails. Feel free to count them one by one and sort them for yourself :). Again, transparency is our best policy :)
6) When will the final results be announced?
– We’re still deciding on the final date but we will release the details really soon. It will most likely be on the 2nd or 3rd weekend of January.
7) Will there be a full blown, red carpet, black tie only, awards ceremony?!
– That has been our dream since the start. But given that we don’t have budget and just use our personal funds for this, we’ll probably just have our usual come-as-you-are, serve balot as snacks, a regular get-together, type of thing :) But hey, if you’re reading this and decide to sponsor our mini event, hit us up at [email protected]! :)
8) Wait, what about the SBR.ph anniversary ride?!
– Yes, we will still have our yearly SBR.ph anniversary ride :) We are turning 3 years old on January 1, 2014 :) That’s something to celebrate right? Get ready for the raffle! :)
9) What the hell is the SBR.ph Forum Poster of the Year category? Who are they and why do they have those weird nicknames?!
The SBR.ph Forum Poster of the Year is our way of recognizing our valuable online forum contributors. If you still do not know, we have an active online community within the website where members exchange training tips, talk about the upcoming races, plan training rides, and the latest gear. How do you join? Simply click the forum tab on the website or click here
That’s it for now :)
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to hit us up :)
