Race Ranger Moves to Age Group Racing at Challenge Wanaka

Triathlon Forum
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Originally published at: Race Ranger Moves to Age Group Racing at Challenge Wanaka - Slowtwitch News

RaceRanger, the draft-detecting technology developed by former pro triathletes James Elvery and Dylan McNiece, is taking the next step in its evolution next month – it will be used by age-group athletes in a test at Challenge Wanaka.

Elvery and McNiece have been working on the project since 2014, but got serious about it in 2017 thanks to backing from World Triathlon. Jimmy Riccitello, IRONMAN’s head referee, has been working with RaceRanger since 2018. The devices have become a mainstay at pro races over the last couple of years thanks to their use at Professional Triathletes Organization (PTO) races and the IRONMAN Pro Series last year.

“Helping with the pros race and making it fairer is really important, and that’s obviously where Dylan and I both come from as racing pros,” Elvery said in an interview at last year’s IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo. “So, our hearts lie there, but to make any sort of business like this work, it needs to be scaled to lots of people and that means getting to age groupers. So we’ve had that in mind right from the start. Now we’re at the stage where we’ve sort of got the pro side under control, where it can sort of roll out every week or a few times every weekend. Now the challenge is really to adapt the system to be able to be used by thousands of people.”

RaceRanger is developing a new iteration of the device that’s being used with the pros to make it “more relevant” to age group athletes, Elvery said. While those at the front end of the race gunning after world championship qualifying slots or age-group podiums will be fixated on the draft-detection capabilities, other athletes won’t be as concerned with that component of the devices. With that in mind, RaceRanger is looking to provide more safety-oriented features and enhanced live-tracking capabilities. Athletes can also be offered more data from their ride to enhance the experience. While draft-detection will remain a key component, the vision is to make it “more relevant for everyone and add value to all the athletes.”

At the pro events the RaceRanger technology has been used to assist the officials in making calls. The technology is there for the process to be completely automated, though. 

“It’s just whether the sport’s ready for it, I think, and whether we we’ll trust the system to completely take care of everything,” Elvery said. “It’s like self driving cars. It could probably do it, but we’re probably not ready to go to sleep at the wheel yet. And so, I think eventually we’ll probably get there and that’ll mean a lot less motorbikes on the course. The interim step that we’re looking at (and we’ve always had in our concept), is to use that internet connection to provide the referees the information remotely, so they don’t need to be right there watching the situation. They can be a kilometer or so behind, or even one day just sitting in a tent monitoring what’s going on … That’ll have a big effect on the behavior, we think.”

IM Partners with RaceRanger for Pro Series

Elvery is also confident that, at the end of the day, the RaceRanger technology can enhance safety even on crowded courses with thousands of athletes.

“If we can generally just keep everyone further apart, right from the start, that is a dangerous situation we can avoid,” he said. “We obviously don’t want to cause (races) to have to reduce their field sizes because that’d be a complete nonstarter. So we’ve got to have a way to work with the current number of athletes on the course, not to cause chaos, but to add those sorts of benefits we can for the athletes that it is relevant to.”

One possible concept would be to split the fields at events based on the priorities for different athletes.

“Perhaps there’s a a discussion to be had around segmenting the field where you might say athletes who want to qualify for Kona, or get a a placing in their age group, are entered in a certain category (or wave),” Elvery continued. “And they might get some other benefits that might be handy for them. Maybe there’s racking next to the pros, which they might value compared to being in the middle of the transition area.”

The RaceRanger technology could even be set up to differentiate between athletes in a different categories, only lighting up for athletes in a “competitive” wave, for example, while providing other data for others.

That’s all a ways away, though – first things first will be the test in Wanaka next month.

“In Wānaka we’ll be looking to get as hands on as possible with a good number of age-group bikes, to understand in detail the subtle differences in set-up between them and what we see with the pros,” Elvery said in a release today. “With the higher numbers, it will also clearly highlight to us which parts of our back-end processes won’t scale to the thousands, and need redesigning to make the step across.”

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How do they solve the problem of groups of 100 coming out of T1? Forcing a 10m gap right away surely leads to a group of athletes stopped at the exit waiting to start.

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Very interesting article: thanks.
I have selected quotes above on which I’d like to comment.

“safety-oriented features” and “enhance safety even on crowded courses”
I’d be interested to understand better how RR can enhance safety other than deterring a rider from riding up someone else’s chuff on aerobars.
Anyway, is this really a “dangerous situation we can [deter]” in practice, given no reduction in athletes per minute on course?

“technology is there for the process to be completely automated”
Is it? I can envisage the technical protocol (provided the transmitter on the fork blade is also capable of receiving identity data from the red flashing seatpost ahead. (Ack the caveats in the article)

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I think it’s a great idea, but that was my big question as well. Would have to get people to seed themselves for the swim better, and even then bring back wave starts so that big bunch ups don’t happen.

I think this:

could also be a good way around those bunches. Reality is it’s just hard to follow the rules to a T without slowing yourself down. Most of those looking to compete (and even have fun) don’t want to break the rules and sportsmanship of the sport, but sometimes the congestion is so bad where you don’t have a choice.

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I think with some data they can start making decisions about how to redo drafting rules.

You get 5 minutes of total time in the draft zone per race. After that a minute gets added to your time for every 30 seconds you spend in the draft zone.

If it turns out that 5 minutes isn’t realistic enough, just look the average amount of draft time that the top 50% of the field spends in the draft zone. If it ends up being 10 minutes, then say after 10 minutes the penalty time starts accruing to your total time. Do you see any issue with some kind of logic like that?

They just need to get some data and start deciding where the cut-offs will be.

The issues I see are going to be things like false positives from bike trains as they pass you. I don’t really have enough faith in the product that it’s going to mesh network with every other unit and know which train you are in. I assume it’s going to see someone passing you and start accruing draft zone time.

So the data might actually show that people who get passed the most, “draft” the most.

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To add onto these challenges: 2 Loop courses

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Sometimes I wonder if your IM is it better to keep your head in the sand than to actually get real world data to know just how bad it is…and yes we all have seen countless vidoes/pics of the “draft” packs at every race. (I do laugh at the “it’s a static photo, you don’t really know who is drafting” yet there is 100 guys all riding wheel to wheel lol)

And this gets an A+ for effort to help AG drafting. I just sorta wonder if in those behind the door meetings someone at IM is like “fuck” when all this stuff comes out, like of just how bad AG drafting truly is, lol. And I say this because I don’t necessarily know that this is going to be effective *yet on the scale it needs to be effective with.

But again A+ effort to combat a very big issue in triathlon.

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I would say as one of the prime customers for Ironman, I’ve never really looked at a Challenge race outside of Roth more seriously until I read this. If deciding between two races, one with and one without RR, even though I question it’s widescale feasibility/usability, I’d sign up for the one with RR.

At least initially until everyone figures out its quirks. Like, ummm, putting some thick insulation tape over a sensor perhaps or draining the battery on your front unit so you draft without consequence…

But the novelty is pretty cool and would be fun to race with.

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It’s interesting because RR is really the 1st type of technology that actually will start to create individual’s “footprint”. Yes we have the random photos we always see of 100 person draft packs, and of course noooooo one from ST is ever in them. No one ever drafts in races.

They’ve had for years the biological passport to sorta be the run around to catching dopers. This “drafting passport” now can sorta be tied to each athlete who signs up for races and uses this technology. Kinda wild.

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Challenge Wanaka had 212 finishers in their half iron distance in 2024 according to the results tab. Only issue I see at Challenge Wanaka is profitability :thinking:

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That’s a great testing ground, and Race Ranger may have usefulness in limited cases like that.

Some other big questions for AGs:

There’s no money on the line, winning doesn’t not matter, but the system is expensive to implement to make sure the right person gets more bragging rights.

Is IM absorbing the cost of this? Surely not, will the average participant be okay with paying $20 more to have their event officiated by computer? The other thread about pricing suggests yes, but I still think people are dumb.

Safety? They say it will improve safety but how? Keeping everyone further apart doesn’t automatically make an event safer. If there’s literal groups riding wheel to wheel then sure, but that’s a small % of the total race miles. I have to think these safety gains are more than cancelled out even just by people staring at the blue dot instead of the road ahead. Not to mention the heretofore unknown change in race dynamics that may see people take more chances passing closely, cornering, descending.

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I can’t imagine 20/pp is worth it to RR to supply this kind of product. The component cost of these units has to be ~40/bike, then they need to ship them around, charge them, clean them, store them, test them, and then there is the data.

I’m assuming at this level they aren’t doing any kind of broadcasting unless these are working over LTE and then you’re talking about more hardware costs, connection fees, database development, and so on. So if they want data, they are downloading off of each unit one at a time.

It sounds to me like what these parts are really going to do is just give you the blinking lights so you can see where you are at and shame the drafters for being shameful.

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here’s the problem with a 5 minute draft zone time then penalty. That’s going to hurt the fast bikers who are slow swimmers. If you’re coming out of the water then passing a bunch of people(legally) you’re going to be in the draft zone for longer than someone who’s a fast swimmer and weak bike who could potentially just suck wheel for 5 minutes.

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Ya, I think their logic has something like, “if athlete exits draft zone within 30 seconds, total draft zone time gets 0 added to it; else, time in draft gets added to total draft zone time.”

The guys sitting in the zone will get hammered. The guys cruising out, likely this logic eliminates most of it, but the guys get get passed by a continuous chain could be counted as drafting since their time in the zone will continue for as long as it takes the chain to go by them?

The big issue is going to be where all this data goes. I think they said it’s stored on the units, which for a large scale or timely penalties is useless. They’d need to broadcast over LTE and buffer and broadcast later when LTE connection is lost I suspect to make it workable.

But that’s going to have a lot of database coding associated with it, which also doesn’t come cheap.

It’s kind of crazy, but I think they could probably put cameras on these things and the added value of you filming everything in front of and behind you during your entire race might be enough to justify paying for it.

I guess they’d also replace timing mats on the bike course, which is some cost savings. And would provide live on demand tracking (assuming LTE coverage is a future product, which they don’t have now to my knowledge).

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If you really want this to work for AG’ers, I think a lot of logic needs to be implemented to determine when RR is active vs. inactive. Lapped courses, inactive zones (such as exiting T1 and entering/exiting feed zones), areas with speed limits like Oceanside and Happy Valley would all have to be accounted for. It could be great to have the data, but I can’t see popularity of triathlon increasing if all of a sudden 30% of the AG field is receiving penalties.

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While the Full Distance was cancelled a few years ago and the Half has only 250’ish athletes,the whole Triathlon Festival Week, Thur-Sun has around 2,500 participants.
For many race directors Iron’s and Half Iron’s are not their focus.

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My understanding is that the system can already be configured to allow for inactive zones (precisely for the reasons you state).

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That was what I was getting at. Somewhere in some board room, higher ups are like this can be BAAAD idea for our brand. To go from “urban legend” of how bad the AG drafting is, to real data…yeah you can’t really claim much plausiable deniability at that point.

(If this product actually shows capability to work on AG scale)

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The bad thing in my mind is not just that there is drafting but that some (rare) people get results damaging penalties while so many others draft away and others try to race fair and don’t get the benefit. So we end up with an important rules that’s randomly enforced to the detriment of many.

Could IM be better off reducing the AG draft zone to 6 meters? Or are we saying that’s too close for safety reasons?

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Absolutely fantastic!

100% if given a choice to do a race with this, even for $100 more, I’m choosing this every time

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