Singapore’s running calendar is built largely around the familiar: park connectors at dawn, reservoir loops, the occasional road closure through the city centre. On Squad Race, which arrives at Perennial Business City on June 13, takes a different approach. The course is a single spiralling car park ramp. Runners descend it, climb back up, and hand off to a teammate waiting at the start.
The event is the Singapore stop of a global series from Swiss sportswear brand On, launched in Beijing in April and travelling through Berlin, Tokyo, Barcelona, Sydney, and a dozen other cities before a world final in Los Angeles this September. Between 40 and 60 local squads will compete on the day. Each squad fields four runners, with a maximum of two men, and completes four laps of the ramp in relay format. The fastest team from each city qualifies for the final.
The choice of venue is deliberate. Multi-storey car parks share a common architecture across cities, which makes them a workable canvas for a travelling format. They also sit outside the usual vocabulary of road racing. There are no finish-line gantries or kilometre markers, only raw concrete, a hard gradient, and the sound of a crew waiting on the level above for the baton to come up.
