If you’ve been emailed “please prepare for attendance to the award ceremony” and your attendance is suddenly no longer required because you’ve been disqualified, that sort of speaks volumes to the mechanics at play. It doesn’t outright prove you were going to win, but you don’t owe the competition runners any benefit of the doubt when they had every opportunity to communicate this and make a decision before it got to the point it did.
Well yes, but actually no.
Being set to win an award is not winning an award. It’s a less heinous lie but it is still a lie.
If you’ve been emailed “please prepare for attendance to the award ceremony” and your attendance is suddenly no longer required because you’ve been disqualified, that sort of speaks volumes to the mechanics at play. It doesn’t outright prove you were going to win, but you don’t owe the competition runners any benefit of the doubt when they had every opportunity to communicate this and make a decision before it got to the point it did.