I had 3 hours last night trying to help a lady sort results out for her event.

It was a fabulous, cheap race and she took pride in the results. The system they were using was good, but failed if there were issues. There were the usual problems that meant it wasn’t straightforward. People racing who hadn’t entered. Numbers covered. People with duplicate numbers. People cooling down and crossing the line twice etc. We got there in the end.

I’ve some experience of this and thought this is an App that would be useful. Sportident is great for big events and long may it live. Too expensive for small events.

Anyone know of an App? I’ll call sport ident if I hear nothing and see if local clubs want to share some kit.

Reminder to all. Try to help those volunteers who turn out free in all weather to make your racing readonably priced. Don’t moan if they get it wrong.

why does it need to be an app? was helping out with some timing at the weekend and whatever they were using was great. Sounds like the biggest issue you had was people. Number spotters helped, no entry no race and no way back onto the course at the end. I can find what they were using if you want, basic premise was enter number and hit enter when they cross the line with paired stop watches at the start. Using a back up timer for no number etc (I was backup with pen & paper)

All done on a laptop running windows. Options for multilap, and everything

There’s a number of different ways of doing results – if its a lap race then you can use the tried and tested cyclocross tick sheet method, although most leagues now use pc based number entry systems – it does require good number callers and the finish line being in a place where they can;t build up too much speed (personal experience there…), alternatively there’s a number of RFID based systems out there.

A lot of the problems sound like the sign on process is not organised.

Not signed on, then no race, DQ any on the course

Duplicate numbers, should never happen, look at why it happened

Numbers not visible, rider problem, state that at the rider briefing

The only way to stop riders going back through the finish line is to setup a tape lobster pot, some will ignore all verbal requests not to.

Timing systems
There is Pursuit, which looks good, runs on windows
Tap timing which is apple based
Or others such as the old beastway system we use

All have their quirks

Also I reckon big number pad beats touch screen any day in the outdoors.

An app won’t solve 80% of your issues; it still won’t know how to deal with missing numbers etc – and provides no easy option to scribble something on a pad of paper.

There is an ipad/iphone app (RaceSplitter) which seems to do some / all of what you want. http://racesplitter.com/ I have not use / tested it.

Not sure how good it will be in bunches / packs of people crossing the line at once.
Not sure how good any app will be on a wet day with a touch screen.
Not sure how easy it will be to set up / add users on the day (when 30 people all try to sign up 10 mins before the start).

Probably no easy way to have a double check system – on the only occasion I have been involved in timing there were two manual ‘lap counters / timers’ who were on opposite sides of the track and at the end independently determined the result – if there was a discrepancy they could unpick it. They were filling in a form with a fixed number of rows per page. Each new page was “called out” so any difference was obvious during the race too.

I wouldn’t want to rely on an App as the only method until it had been extensively tested.

It does read as if you are looking for a tech solution rather than solving the problems encountered. None of that need happen and could be resolved without any cost and a bit of thinking and enforcement on the day.

Good stuff.

At the weekend I was catching folk who’s numbers couldn’t be seen. I videod the whole finish which proved invaluable in the end. If you could add voice recognition which added a time stamp to the number and put in a spreadsheet then you are onto a winner. Any programmers out there?

I wrote an app for recording race times, my mate organised a race. It worked pretty well, but it relied on someone typing numbers into a keypad. It was set up to handle bunches of riders coming in quickly*, and we made the start/finish on a slow corner and funneled people into single file at the last minute too afaik.

If say three people came in, you could hit the spacebar three times when they crossed, and type their numbers in afterwards, it would match numbers to times. It benefited from a second person making notes too though.