OpenTrack Chip Timing Integration: A RaceTec Success Story
Working with the British Masters Athletics Federation to provide a fully integrated competition experience
Having found a new home in Mallory Park, Leicestershire, at the end of last year, the British Masters Road Relays are on the rise.
Now into their second year at the racing circuit, British Masters, along with Active Training World, were keen to take the event to the next level, and we were delighted to assist, developing all-new chip timing integration and bringing live road race results to OpenTrack.
With OpenTrack making things smooth for organiser, team manager, and competitor alike, here’s a run through of how things went (and how you can do it too), from first entry to final relay leg.
Getting started with Relay Entries
As an organiser, you want to gather relay entries in plenty of time, but forcing people to declare athletes months in advance can cause headaches.
We know it’s best to keep things simple, so our relay entry process is trivial.
Simply select a club:
Add the number of teams you want:
And pay:
With that done, there’s nothing to worry about until it’s time to declare!
Completing Team Declarations
Our team declaration screens are at home in any athletics environment, and see use during league athletics, cross country races, and more.
For BMAF, the declaration screens ensured that every athlete was correctly licensed, and the ability to declare reserve athletes meant team managers could be confident each potential squad member was registered before race day!
RaceTec Chip Timing
However, the most important element of the day was our chip timing integration.
Available for anyone using RaceTec to time their events (integrations with MYLAPS and Race Result are also available), we constantly updated the results of each race, collecting the latest data as athletes crossed the timing mats.
With results updating in real time, and with athlete names matching declarations, it represented a massive improvement in competitor experience than in previous years — and don’t just take our word for it!
The new two-way real-time interface between OpenTrack and chip timing simplified the process of relay team declarations, such that the BMAF desk only had to help a few clubs, whilst the Race Director and chip timing team were not distracted at all this year.
It will work equally well even when it becomes much larger as the kick-off event for a weekend of masters athletics next year.
Many teams realised they could see the progress of races in real time and these two elements of hassle-free administration and rapid availability of results are what makes it an A1 event for the athletes and their supporters, with everyone staying for the two medal presentations.
Peter Kennedy, BMAF
The British Masters Road Relays were delivered at Mallory Park Racing Circuit by ATW and timed by our in-house timing partner, Event Chip Timing.
As the relay entries and team declarations took place on OpenTrack, by feeding the timing results over in real-time, ATW were able to concentrate on delivering a great experience for the athletes on the day, while BMAF could deal with team manager queries and team changes in OpenTrack themselves.
This was a much improved process from the prior year, and we look forward to a great event back at Mallory in 2025.
Mike Jubb, Active Training World
Beyond the results
As part of a large package of improvements for the Championships, our social cards have been optimised for relays, now featuring the runners’ names.
Our PDF downloads have also been tweaked, with stats-rich results PDFs containing a wealth of information on fastest legs and much more.
If you’ve got a road, cross-country, or any other type of relay coming up, why not give our features a try? We’re always happy to talk about how we can make things work for you.
As always, if you have any feedback, requests, or want help bringing your athletics into the 21st century, feel free to get in touch at info@opentrack.run.