Official RaceRanger Thread

[RaceRanger]

Hello Slowtwitch,

I’ve created a profile here to engage in discussion and to try and respond to any questions you may have.
Looking forward to hearing from you, but please excuse me, I must now go to sleep. Back in 4-5hrs.

Cheers

James Elvery
CEO & Co-Founder
RaceRanger

[ThailandUltras]

Hey James,best let a few people know what RaceRanger is…All the best of luck to you and Dylan.
RACE RANGER

Todays article on the World Triathlon website.
World Triathlon and RaceRanger team-up to develop an anti-drafting technology — World Triathlon
.

[RaceRanger]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

[Slowman]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

thank you for the consideration but you’re fine. it’s helpful that you’re here to answer questions.

a short rant first, if i might. the one thing that i found not quite appropriate for world triathlon to state in its article is, “The official assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a penalty needs to be applied through the system.” i like the idea of the tech. we’ve all been wondering about tech like this for decades. but world triathlon - for all the good it does - has pretty much stiff-armed no-draft tri for the past 30 years. which is fine. they go their way, we go ours. for them to come in now with this, and not simply present the tech, but to stipulate how the rules of competition will absorb the tech, is to me tone-deaf. i like the idea of the tech, but i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit. having given my little rant, these would be my questions:

1. how much would this cost? per unit?
2. do you see this is a pro-only device or a device used by the entire field?
3. if the latter, who pays? is this a rental thing? you sell it to race timers, just like timing systems and chips? there’s a rental fee absorbed by the RD or the athletes themselves?
4. is there a timer embedded in the device? you have 20sec to be in the draft zone, so, are officials alerted only after the device detects drafting after 20sec? otherwise, it seems as if the device would be going off pretty well constantly as people are passing other people.

thanks in advance for your help. exciting tech. i’m interested to see how this will work.

[RowToTri]

People have been talking about such a system for a long time! What is the accuracy of the distance measuring and the sampling rate? What happens when you have 2-4 people approaching a rider from behind, all passing each other at different times and different rates? Can it identify all the riders specifically and keep track of all of the relevant passing dynamics?

[stevej]

What’s the battery life on the sensors and what kind of batteries are used? What kind of sensors are being utilized in the device?

[Thom]

People have been talking about such a system for a long time! What is the accuracy of the distance measuring and the sampling rate? What happens when you have 2-4 people approaching a rider from behind, all passing each other at different times and different rates? Can it identify all the riders specifically and keep track of all of the relevant passing dynamics?

Anybody that’s raced a large race MOP knows that the first hour is a continuous exercise in trying to interpret the rules in a bunch of special cases. I can’t even imagine an algorithm that would sort all that out.

[davetallo]

fantastic.

[pk]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

thank you for the consideration but you’re fine. it’s helpful that you’re here to answer questions.

a short rant first, if i might. the one thing that i found not quite appropriate for world triathlon to state in its article is, “The official assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a penalty needs to be applied through the system.” i like the idea of the tech. we’ve all been wondering about tech like this for decades. but world triathlon - for all the good it does - has pretty much stiff-armed no-draft tri for the past 30 years. which is fine. they go their way, we go ours. for them to come in now with this, and not simply present the tech, but to stipulate how the rules of competition will absorb the tech, is to me tone-deaf. i like the idea of the tech, but i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit. having given my little rant, these would be my questions:

Dan iam not sure if I follow you here, ironman and all the NF follow the itu drafting rules, at present ,and at the end of the day all this device is going to to is to help to enforce existing rules, or am i wrong here.

[Slowman]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

thank you for the consideration but you’re fine. it’s helpful that you’re here to answer questions.

a short rant first, if i might. the one thing that i found not quite appropriate for world triathlon to state in its article is, “The official assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a penalty needs to be applied through the system.” i like the idea of the tech. we’ve all been wondering about tech like this for decades. but world triathlon - for all the good it does - has pretty much stiff-armed no-draft tri for the past 30 years. which is fine. they go their way, we go ours. for them to come in now with this, and not simply present the tech, but to stipulate how the rules of competition will absorb the tech, is to me tone-deaf. i like the idea of the tech, but i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit. having given my little rant, these would be my questions:

Dan iam not sure if I follow you here, ironman and all the NF follow the itu drafting rules, at present ,and at the end of the day all this device is going to to is to help to enforce existing rules, or am i wrong here.

i have no problem with the device. i like the idea of the device. i think i made that pretty clear. what happens in the US, at least, is that IRONMAN follows USAT’s rules, and applies for and is generally granted variances from those rules that better enable IRONMAN to police a unique set of race circumstances. to the degree there is alignment with the ITU’s rules, i think history would show that world triathlon mostly borrows from what the federations have done.

my concern is not with the tech, or with world triathlon, but i have a minor concern over world triathlon telling federations how and when to deploy the tech. when you and i get our questions answered i’ll have a better idea of whether my concern is valid or whether i should just chill.

[pk]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

thank you for the consideration but you’re fine. it’s helpful that you’re here to answer questions.

a short rant first, if i might. the one thing that i found not quite appropriate for world triathlon to state in its article is, “The official assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a penalty needs to be applied through the system.” i like the idea of the tech. we’ve all been wondering about tech like this for decades. but world triathlon - for all the good it does - has pretty much stiff-armed no-draft tri for the past 30 years. which is fine. they go their way, we go ours. for them to come in now with this, and not simply present the tech, but to stipulate how the rules of competition will absorb the tech, is to me tone-deaf. i like the idea of the tech, but i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit. having given my little rant, these would be my questions:

Dan iam not sure if I follow you here, ironman and all the NF follow the itu drafting rules, at present ,and at the end of the day all this device is going to to is to help to enforce existing rules, or am i wrong here.

i have no problem with the device. i like the idea of the device. i think i made that pretty clear. what happens in the US, at least, is that IRONMAN follows USAT’s rules, and applies for and is generally granted variances from those rules that better enable IRONMAN to police a unique set of race circumstances. to the degree there is alignment with the ITU’s rules, i think history would show that world triathlon mostly borrows from what the federations have done.

my concern is not with the tech, or with world triathlon, but i have a minor concern over world triathlon telling federations how and when to deploy the tech. when you and i get our questions answered i’ll have a better idea of whether my concern is valid or whether i should just chill.

yes you made it clear that you have no issue with the device, to me it would appear that all that changes with this device is that a race referee in any given country can just control his or her drafting sector better and more objectively and still use his interpretation of the rules.
in the article it does not say that challenge cant use the 20 m draft zone once this device is used for instance.

so i guess i should ask the question in what ways can the race ranger be customised
can the drafting zone distances be changed

also i wonder with how many different devices can my race ranger communicate at the same time

[NordicSkier]

Not a question but more of a musing…

Ironman will never use this type of device in the AG field because it goes against their business model of stacking thousands of racers into courses where it’s impossible to race without drafting.

Large races can afford the tech, but won’t use it.
Small races probably can’t afford the tech, but would benefit from it.

[Slowman]

Thank-you

I didn’t want to break the ST rules.

Cheers!

thank you for the consideration but you’re fine. it’s helpful that you’re here to answer questions.

a short rant first, if i might. the one thing that i found not quite appropriate for world triathlon to state in its article is, “The official assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a penalty needs to be applied through the system.” i like the idea of the tech. we’ve all been wondering about tech like this for decades. but world triathlon - for all the good it does - has pretty much stiff-armed no-draft tri for the past 30 years. which is fine. they go their way, we go ours. for them to come in now with this, and not simply present the tech, but to stipulate how the rules of competition will absorb the tech, is to me tone-deaf. i like the idea of the tech, but i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit. having given my little rant, these would be my questions:

Dan iam not sure if I follow you here, ironman and all the NF follow the itu drafting rules, at present ,and at the end of the day all this device is going to to is to help to enforce existing rules, or am i wrong here.

i have no problem with the device. i like the idea of the device. i think i made that pretty clear. what happens in the US, at least, is that IRONMAN follows USAT’s rules, and applies for and is generally granted variances from those rules that better enable IRONMAN to police a unique set of race circumstances. to the degree there is alignment with the ITU’s rules, i think history would show that world triathlon mostly borrows from what the federations have done.

my concern is not with the tech, or with world triathlon, but i have a minor concern over world triathlon telling federations how and when to deploy the tech. when you and i get our questions answered i’ll have a better idea of whether my concern is valid or whether i should just chill.

yes you made it clear that you have no issue with the device, to me it would appear that all that changes with this device is that a race referee in any given country can just control his or her drafting sector better and more objectively and still use his interpretation of the rules.
in the article it does not say that challenge cant use the 20 m draft zone once this device is used for instance.

so i guess i should ask the question in what ways can the race ranger be customised
can the drafting zone distances be changed

also i wonder with how many different devices can my race ranger communicate at the same time

i have only one quarrel with your post. there seems to be an issue with the quoting is handled. is that us or you? edit: i see that with your posts that my own post is nested inside a quote. it may be your sig, the way it’s configured. i’ll take a look at the backend.

[FuzzyRunner]

Hi James,

How does the device make the distinction between a rider being passed and dropping back out of the draft zone, and a rider going into the draft zone and then dropping out of it (Does each device have its own #ID)? Does the front/rear devices talk to each other so there is acknowledgment of a pass instead of a rider pulling up beside another but never making the pass?

I assume there isn’t a GPS receiver in these devices. Is there a way to disable the devices in certain locations along the course? I’m thinking during aid station stops, when I’m for sure “drafting” people through the stop but there isn’t a safe way not to. Or people that are actually stopped at the aid stations and their receivers in the line of sight of another bike also stopped. Or at the very beginning/end of the ride where congestion is unavoidable.

[TheStroBro]

I like the idea of the tech, but I also am unwilling to purchase one and I’m definitely unwilling to have my race entry fees go up pick a number. But I’m going to guess that the total cost will not shared between the race promoter and the athlete but rather just the athlete footing the bill if the race promoter were to utilize this service. What I posted in another thread is below:

No one will be buying this, and if the ITU attempts to mandate this upon WTC and Challenge for 99% of those that do triathlon I foresee a fight that the ITU will lose.

But, let’s say WTC is cool with it and buys a couple sets that only get used with the pros. I’d find it interesting. IFF WTC somehow accepts this and mandates this unit to amateurs, I expect even more complaints on this board about how much races cost because it’s gonna go up at least $200 for Tier 1 pricing.

Also, website didn’t show a price point for the unit so I’m guessing it’s gonna be stupid. Hence no one will be buying it.

Also, it’s pretty worthless if you have races like Barcelona and Mallorca where you add 3500 Bike-Runners onto the course.

What is your business model here?

Sell directly to athletes? Be a service that is contracted by the race promoter like chip timing is? Sell units to athletes but services to national federations who supply the judiciary to race promotion companies? Garmin Varia costs $200, gonna guess your unit will be similar or more expensive since there are two parts.

But again, there are better ways to reduce drafting in Ironman racing than having this device. But fair play to you for getting some funding from the international governing body.

[andrewjshults]

If you’re comfortable with it, any more details you can share than what’s in the FAQ about how you get the 10cm resolution?

[Trauma]

As someone who officiates, and has lived the pain of being on a moto, and trying actually penalize drafting in races in a fair and transparent way, I love the idea of this type of solution. I’ll list some of the potential challenges that I see with this:

• Cost, I suspect this is not cheap, which is a barrier for races with large AG fields, and could find it being implemented in a pro only manner… As others have suggested, potentially having the timing company or sanctioning bodies as the target purchaser, that would then rent them out to individual events might be the target model for uptake. The challenge is how much will participants be willing to pay for this to be implemented, realizing that the increased cost will likely be transferred to the racers.
• This type of device will likely cause some serious reckoning with race directors. To manage event costs, many events tend to try to fit as many racers as possible in the shortest amount of time to maximize revenue and reduce costs, this often creates situations where it may be impossible not to draft, and potentially with this type of device large chunks of the field could be penalized. Some RDs might be resistant to leveraging this type of solution, purely, because it highlights organizational failings in the event, and where they don’t adequately spread out waves over enough course to create reasonable conditions, so
• The visual indicators to drafters or draftees can be both a blessing and a curse. the visible cues help people correct behaviour, but it also may cause those being drafting off of to want to take things into their own hands and increase the likelihood of vigilante justice.
• Many RDs pride themselves on providing a positive experience to racers. Some generally prefer education over enforcement when it comes to violations, for all but the most severe infractions. Generally people are grumpy when they get penalized, and may be less likely to register for that event in the future, which is not ideal for RDs, and may prevent uptake. While we also hear the opposite, where there are some races widely known as draftfests, which discourages some people from registering. All this speaks to the delicate balance of heavy handed enforcement and racer experience, which influences the value proposition for racers.

I do see a relatively easier path towards pro implementation, but for age groupers, all of those concerns come into play. As I said, I like the idea, but it would be great to get the take from some RDs on how they view this, and the feasibility of implementation. I’d also love to see some field testing results in an actual race, and how the officials found working with the tool. I am less cynical than slowman on ITU/World Tri’s views on non-drafting racing, while they have driven uptake of draft-legal racing in certain formats, non-draft racing is still a key components once you get to the middle or long distances for elites, and standard distance for AG, and it’s great to see that they have been involved throughout to help bring the perspective of those enforcing drafting rules, some of the challenges and nuances of that to help with optimizing the tool. I’m excited to see how this evolves, and makes it way into broader use.

[RaceRanger]

Hi Everyone

Thanks a lot for the questions.
I’ll try and cover off a few here and then make my way down
Apologies if I don’t master the Forum thread / reply nuances right away;

Slowman – Thanks for having us.
As PK pointed out, World Triathlon have over the years developed what is now the recognised gold standard in competition rules. They are used now at the majority of races around the world, including most Challenge and Ironman events. Ironman and Challenge, as well as member federations are now involved regularly in working group discussions led by World Triathlon, whenever the rules need revising, which I feel is a real positive to see.

These event companies have recognised the value in using this very clearly defined rule set, rather than having to come up with and maintaining their own huge legally checked document and processes to achieve largely the same result. It’s a good thing for the sport if we can unify around one standard set of rules. Athletes get a more consistent race experience wherever they are, and the federations who are usually delivering the officiating, have one set of rules to learn, train newcomers on and administer etc.

*“i think IRONMAN (as one example), and each NF, will want to deploy the tech and build the rules of competition using the tech as they see fit”. *

Yes it will still absolutely be up to the event companies discretion as to whether they want to offer the technology at their races or not. There is no mandate that RaceRanger or other tech must be used. We would never be able to get enough made for at least a few years… but it’s more that there will need to be some additions to the existing competition rules, to accommodate RaceRanger, to be applied at events where it is in use.

It’s worth noting that most NF’s use either the World Triathlon rules with the odd local variation here and there. Including the setting of the drafting rules and distances. Some events also don’t require penalties to be served on course, but they are just applied at transition or the finish time. The RaceRanger app, which can actually be used as an officiating tool for all level of races without needing the on-bike drafting hardware, has an ‘event creation’ / set-up process, where these options are selected, so the system operates the right way for the event on the day. If you have 2 races on the same course at the same time, subsets of race numbers can be programmed to be with different rule sets. For example if you have a half and a full within one event, they run the same drafting distance rules, but the time penalties are different for each. So different penalty times are pre-programmed for each set of athletes, and then when they get a penalty they serve the right time.

1.* **How much? *As we will deliver the service at the event (like timing companies today) it will most likely be an increase to the entry fees for an event to cover the cost. And obviously event entries open up generally a year out from an event, so there is a good lead time between us having it ready and proven to it actually being used by those larger fields. Unfortunately we can’t put a firm figure on it at this stage for a number of reasons. We have enough components to build a good number of prototypes which will comfortably get us through a couple more development stages, but it is very hard to get an accurate new quote (still was 2-3 weeks ago anyway) for nearly any electronic components right now due to the disruptions to global manufacturing and supply chains. It’s a real mess.
But we know it has to be realistic. It has to be low enough that it doesn’t cause many (if any) to choose not to do a race. We would love to make it free, but you know… investors, 5yrs of effort etc.
After the kinks have been ironed out in delivering the service we see some demand from athletes to buy the devices themselves to practice with in training. It would need to be yourself and a buddy each with a system for it to work, and we would need to make some further software adjustments. But initially we will avoid the hassles of a) packaging, b) consumer sales and collecting $ c) warranties and returns, by retaining ownership of the devices. We can also make sure any bugs are thoroughly sorted out this way. We can test every device before we ever take it to a race. Most electronic goods have a % failure right from manufacture. If a couple of our devices fail from the factory, we can just take them out of circulation before they see the light of day.

*2. **Do you see this is a pro-only device or a device used by the entire field? *
Initially we will definitely get feedback from pros (we’ve been doing this already), and they will be important in helping us validate the tech and gain acceptance that everything works. But from the start we were clear that we didn’t think we could make a pro-only system a viable business, and so it had to be applicable to both groups. There are clear differences between the two. As a business it works either one of two ways; a) the entire field uses it, and we then need to make a lot of devices (3500-4000 sets) to be able to cover them all in a season, but the cost of delivering the service can be quite modest as it’s spread widely.
OR b) we go the way suggested here by others, and it is offered as a way to segment the AG fields at big events. Ie an opt-in at entry for those that want to choose to perhaps qualify for Kona, or be placed in their age group, or similar. The per athlete charge would be higher for this way, again depending on the uptake, but with lower numbers, it would be easier to manage physically as well (handling time). There would need to be a way to keep athletes with RaceRanger separate from those without it, so some more race operations questions to work through around this way.

3. If the latter, who pays? is this a rental thing?
   Correct. Hardware as a service. Initially we will have a team of our own staff that will deliver the service in a controlled way, likely for 1-2 seasons, and yes then move more to selling the systems to others who would provide it to spread it wider around the world, as well as direct sales to riders.

4. Is there a timer embedded in the device?
   Yes correct. The devices only report ‘illegal time’. So once you go over the 25secs, or whatever rule the event set is following (pre-programmed before the race), that timer is started, and that info is sent out for any referees within range to pick up. When the data is picked up by a referee it’s then shared to the cloud part of the app, which determines what to show the referee. We only show them the worst offending handful (they have asked for this). What qualifies you to be one of those handful of ‘worst offenders?’ How do we determine what is bad drafting? Athletes are ranked by their illegal time, in a rolling period, currently this is the last ‘illegal time in the last 15mins’. The referee can then see the location of those athletes and be able to move ahead or drop back to see what is going on or speak with the athlete. Really what the referees do with the info RaceRanger provides them will be up to them to decide. Just like a video replay system in many sports.

We’ve gone quite deep on a lot of the questions you may have, on our website under the FAQ page.

Thanks!

[RaceRanger]

Thanks Ed
10cm accuracy, with up to 10x measurements per second. At times this drops to 4x per second, depending on the number of athletes around.
Yes. The system can handle bunch scenarios / passing dynamics with higher numbers.
In terms of the lights the athlete sees, the light of the rider directly in front of them, is the signal directed at them but at the same time, other rider’s devices will still be monitoring your position.

We really didn’t want to put something out there that wasn’t that accurate, or only worked ‘most of the time’.

People have been talking about such a system for a long time! What is the accuracy of the distance measuring and the sampling rate? What happens when you have 2-4 people approaching a rider from behind, all passing each other at different times and different rates? Can it identify all the riders specifically and keep track of all of the relevant passing dynamics?

[MrTri123]

Could you incorporate this into a timing chip racer have on their ankle?