AG podium. Oh, wait, maybe not.

Super weird.  I have been to races with no awards, and races that only announce first place, but everyone knows.  Really weird thing to do to kids though.

Love this... what seems more ridiculous to me is this type of comment... How often have you been there to say this?

To the op, yes, it is weird and I would have asked why at least. Congrats on your race though

Beginning to wonder if this is something cultural. There is a French adventure travel company that puts on quite a few races in Vietnam, and their awards are, shall we say, "flexible". In each race, about 1/2 to 1/3 of the participants have been women, but in many races there are no separate prizes for women or girls. In relay-type adventure races, they make no distinction between male, female, and co-ed teams. In my first tri, an off-road sprint, there were awards for the first six men and first master's man; I was second woman (and first master's) and got nothing.  A friend who DNF'd the longer race by cutting the bike course short due to a mechanical, and told the RD that, still received an award for first place for that race, even though some other women, much slower, completed the event. I don't know if they allocate awards based on how many show up (doesn't compute, given the numbers) or just underestimate the number of women and age-groupers. (Hard to see the latter as you must register in advance.)

Along with several colleagues, after several complaints, I have stopped doing races with this company--feel that intentional or not, it's disrespectful of women. There have been other issues with poor course marking and medical support as well. The latter has probably less to do with culture and more with their inexperience at putting on events.

That's very odd.  What did the race advertise in advance that the awards would be?

Just to say no offense taken at the "it's France after all" remark. I'm French-American and I find the AG here very strange. To go from 17-18 to 18-39 just seems like a big jump - well, especially for people on the upper end of the AG. I know tons of people who can't wait to hit 40 to start competing with the "older" folks. Who, by the way, have several AG (40-49, then 50-59, etc).

In any case, the rewards weren't advertised at any level. But what I found strange was why you'd give out 3 awards in the 15-16 AG, but only 2 in the 17-18, and 1 in the over 18 when the number of participants was essentially the same, though albeit small (4-5). And even weirder why they would announce someone's name (in this case mine) only to say - "sorry no award in that AG". Why no award for the 40+ AG?

I'm going to send an email off to the organizers letting them know what I thought about the awards ceremony because I think it was quite discouraging. To avoid disappointment they could at least be upfront about the way they would run the awards.