Like the title says, why are there so many different Ironman finish line clocks?
More importantly, why are some races still using the same old yellow-on-black LCD clock from the 1980s (or a red variation), which was based on a mass start 'gun time' format? It seems almost useless for anything other than ruining everyone's finish line photo with a 20 minute-ish slower time. They manually change the clock at some races to hit 17:00:00 after the last swimmer starts, which means everyone's time is wrong, save for that one hesitant swimmer.
Since around 2015, the IM World Championships, some IM races in Europe, and a handful of 70.3 races have incorporated fancy new clocks with chip times and names on them, which nicely accommodates the change to wave/rolling starts. I would have thought these would spread like wildfire to all IM events.
Safe to assume they are all changing soon?
Examples:
Old (this guy was probably sub 10hrs)
Old (maybe hers was correct? But probably not, since the clock is probably based on the pro men start)
New (actual chip time)
New (actual chip time for both of these guys)
More importantly, why are some races still using the same old yellow-on-black LCD clock from the 1980s (or a red variation), which was based on a mass start 'gun time' format? It seems almost useless for anything other than ruining everyone's finish line photo with a 20 minute-ish slower time. They manually change the clock at some races to hit 17:00:00 after the last swimmer starts, which means everyone's time is wrong, save for that one hesitant swimmer.
Since around 2015, the IM World Championships, some IM races in Europe, and a handful of 70.3 races have incorporated fancy new clocks with chip times and names on them, which nicely accommodates the change to wave/rolling starts. I would have thought these would spread like wildfire to all IM events.
Safe to assume they are all changing soon?
Examples:
Old (this guy was probably sub 10hrs)
Old (maybe hers was correct? But probably not, since the clock is probably based on the pro men start)
New (actual chip time)
New (actual chip time for both of these guys)