# Enduro: Timing systems and timing formats



## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

Look to hear success and failures for timing systems and formats.

I did the Crankworx Canadian Open Enduro on Saturday (had a great day) and the format was designated start times for the four stages with un-timed transitions.

Start gate has a synced clock and the started had a list of the start times, you pulled into the gate he counted you down and you were off when he said go. If you were late in getting to the stage (transition times were very tight) you time started with or without you. They would slot late riders into the "ghost rider" slots. The intervals were 30 seconds between riders and there were a number of one minute gaps put in as "ghost riders" to allow slotting in late guys.

Looking to hear what other formats work or don't work.


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## danielsilva (Aug 13, 2011)

Dunno every race i entered had that basic same format, some would count how much time you did over the slotted transition time and add it to your run, did one where they just added penalties ( +5s, +10s etc ) to your run time depending on how late you arrived.

But what you described is pretty much standard ( at least if i understood you correctly ).


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## KRob (Jan 13, 2004)

We do the satellite synced clocks at each check point. CP worker counts you down after writing your start time on your number plate and in his note book. No penalty for arriving late... but we're needing to add that. Having scheduled start times sounds like it would work, but would take some thinking the night before.

At the Wasatch Enduro you got an ankle band with some kind of chip in it that automatically started your time when you crossed the matte at the top of the run and stopped it when you crossed another one at the end. Pretty slick.

Very generous allowances for transfer sections with the start gate not opening until a certain time the closing at another set time. Not sure what happened if you didn't make it to the start in time. Most people had an hour to hour and a half wait at the start gates. Too much time. Glad the weather was pleasant.

Automated Sports Timing out of Salt Lake did the timing.


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## rodeoj (May 18, 2011)

In the MSC Super-d they've been using slotted start times. You may leave anytime under 5 seconds of your start time ( the timing laser beam is broken as you cross the plane of the laser ) and it automagically clocks you as you cross the finish.

This past weekend, the 30+ class wore ankle bracelets, no unicorn charms on them though. We were pretty sure they were for house arrest... the bracelets seem like a good system. I think we were guinea pigging for their other BME races...


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## Verttii (Aug 20, 2009)

I'm one of the organizers for the national enduro series in Finland, and for this season we got new timing system that has proven to be very good, accurate and reliable. System is called emiTag, a wireless version of the old EMIT system that has been used for ages in orienteering(at least in Europe). System works with gates/transceivers on start and finish and the timing chip is attached with velcro bracelet to right side of handlebars.

Timing chip registers a timestamp always when you pass a start or finish transceiver, always when timestamp is registered the chip has a red led which blinks for 5 seconds. The chip has to be "reset" with zero-stamp before starting the race, and after the race timestamps are read to a laptop with USB reading device. Software used is custom made by company called Oriento Solutions, from the program you get report with final times and separate report with stage times, also some different prints are available, but those two are mostly used on our purposes...

Timing chip









Transceiver & chip









Chip can register transceiver signal when passing the transceiver from less than 1m distance with maximum speed of 35km/h, timing accuracy is .01 seconds. That works for most cases, but we have made slow down corners just before the finish gate, if the end of a stage is some high speed section. The start and finish gates are always set to 90cm wide and the transceivers middle spot is 105cm from the ground.

On the first race of this year we had some misses on start gate of one stage, because it was set too wide(about 130cm) and transceiver was installed too high. After the first race we improved the start&finish gates so after that I think that it has been only couple of missed stamps in the following races, that have had 60 to 160 participants. Also these "misses" have been due to either incorrectly placed timing chip or some "hazard" approach to finish gate.

So far we have been very satisfied to this new emiTag timing sytem and we'll continue using it for the rest of the season and next year and... 

Some story about the Finnish enduro series: In English | System1 MTB Enduro // EBA

And a video from the fifth race of this season, held on last weekend: Alhovuoren kisavideo | System1 MTB Enduro // EBA


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

I've been meaning to comment here for a while, but the season was winding down anyway...

I've only participated in one enduro, our local four day (two weekend) series. It has been reasonably well attended, but operates on fairly limited resources. The timing is based on synced clocks and 30 second starts. Each stage gate had two monitors who record the rider's number and time as they pass through the gate. The transfer legs / allotment sections have time bonuses for the fastest three riders in each category, and (modest) time penalties for riders who exceed them. 

All the standings and times are calculated in an Excel spreadsheet, which definitely adds to the labor involved. A marathon-style ankle bracelet system would be great, but probably more of an investment than our local club will make for a few more years.


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## KRob (Jan 13, 2004)

evasive said:


> I've been meaning to comment here for a while, but the season was winding down anyway...
> 
> I've only participated in one enduro, our local four day (two weekend) series. It has been reasonably well attended, but operates on fairly limited resources. The timing is based on synced clocks and 30 second starts. Each stage gate had two monitors who record the rider's number and time as they pass through the gate. The transfer legs / allotment sections have time bonuses for the fastest three riders in each category, and (modest) time penalties for riders who exceed them.
> 
> All the standings and times are calculated in an Excel spreadsheet, which definitely adds to the labor involved. A marathon-style ankle bracelet system would be great, but probably more of an investment than our local club will make for a few more years.


Sounds like the same as our system. So do you record start and finish times for transfer sections as well to assess the bonuses and penalties....or is there just a running clock from the very start of the race? Still confused on how to do that. Although I like the idea and want to incorporate it to help move riders along. We get a few people that want to spend all day out there.

We calculated all standings and special test times by hand the first few years but lately we've been using www.moto-tally. It's pretty inexpensive and once loaded onto your computer you just feed it the gross numbers and it generates the times and standings. Still some data entry, but no calculating.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

What gets recorded is the time on the clock(s) at the start of the race and at the start and finish of the timed legs. On the climbs/allotments/transfers, the timers don't record when you arrive at the checkpoint, only when you pass through the gate.

Here's a link to one of our result tables. And if you're curious, here's the link to the event.

Thanks for the link to moto tally. I'll pass that suggestion on.


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## KRob (Jan 13, 2004)

evasive said:


> What gets recorded is the time on the clock(s) at the start of the race and at the start and finish of the timed legs. On the climbs/allotments/transfers, the timers don't record when you arrive at the checkpoint, only when you pass through the gate.
> 
> Here's a link to one of our result tables. And if you're curious, here's the link to the event.
> 
> Thanks for the link to moto tally. I'll pass that suggestion on.


Oh. Ok. Looks like you send folks off in 30 second intervals off the start, recording their start times before they leave. Makes sense. So the sooner you get to the check point at the start of the timed section the more time you have to rest or hang out before incurring a penalty.

How do you establish acceptable times for the transfer/allotment sections?Just by pre-riding it and adding a little time to what's a comfortable pace for the average rider? And do you have different allotments for different classes? Say Experts get 1:00 hour to get there but Sport riders get 1:15, Beginners 1:30 or something like that?

Looks like a fun event. I'm assuming Helena, MT from the name but didn't see where the race is held on your site.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

Yes to both: Helena, MT and staggered starts, generally 30 seconds apart, although I think we used 60 seconds on one course where we needed more separation. Sorry I didn't spell that out: like I wrote earlier, it's the only one I've done so I don't have anything to compare to. 

As far as the allotments, since the courses were on trails that many of us ride regularly, the locals all have a decent idea of how long something takes to ride. The race organizer just came up with those times based on that experience, with the intent that they be generous.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

Oh, one allotment for everyone, regardless of category. (Without quoting, in Tapatalk I can't see the post above me to remind myself what I'm writing about...) Starts worked from Cat 1 down. In our race, Cat 2 was where the real action was. Lots of shredders around who don't bother with an annual license.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

Does anyone know how the system works that they use for the Trans-Provence?










From the video it looks like you tap a beacon on your wrist to this and when it beeps your time starts. Any idea on how the finish line works? Timing light or RFID?


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

It's called SPORTident and it's made in Germany. Originally it was made for orienteering and apparently really durable and simple to use; racers just swipe the control station with a card at the start and finish of each stage. At the end of the race you can download the time and print off individual results with a special printer they sell. The only reason I haven't pulled the trigger is because I'm trying to find Enduro specific software to go with it so I can manage all the results. Here is the website SPORTident

I have been looking into this system for the enduro I put on. Capitol Forest Enduro


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

So these are just basically little RFID writers and they writing a time stamp on the card at the start and end of each special stage. Pretty simple to then read the data after the last stage and compile the days results.

Are guys okay with "racing" to a stop at the end of a stage to complete their time?

Some digging shows they are also using this type of system for the Monten Baik Enduro's in Chile.

MTBK ENDURO » Bases de Competencia

This could be easily reverse engineered and built with arduino's and basic rfid writers. Bulk order passive rfid tags from China that can accept enought data for the days stages. Their system looks to also store the time stamps on each reader to duplicate the data.

I like this type of system for it's scalability and cost effectiveness. If more events got behind this type of system and it was the accepted norm it would help more organizers get behind the enduro format without it becoming a timing nightmare.

I'd really like to see our local "twoonie" once a month race series evolve into an enduro series, the big hurdle is how to time it accurately without a big investment. That's the whole reason I started this thread.


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## Bob W (Jul 6, 2004)

*Timig system*

We have used the SportIdent system for both our events this year. (Home | Endurorama). Overall great system, donwside limited rental avalibility in the States. Purchase price in on the somewhat high side (approx $4000 for equip and up to 170 timing cards).

We wrote our own excel sheet to handle the timing of the stages. For our first event we only had one small glitch, but we stayed on schedule for when we said we would have results out. Second event everything worked perfect.


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## batts65 (Nov 9, 2006)

Bob W said:


> We have used the SportIdent system for both our events this year. (Home | Endurorama). Overall great system, donwside limited rental avalibility in the States. Purchase price in on the somewhat high side (approx $4000 for equip and up to 170 timing cards).
> 
> We wrote our own excel sheet to handle the timing of the stages. For our first event we only had one small glitch, but we stayed on schedule for when we said we would have results out. Second event everything worked perfect.


I was at the first event and I can say as a competitor I did not notice any issues that Bob is talking about.

This system was amazing, it was not at all an issue to stop and "time out" of the stage, most of the stages they tried to end where you would be at a technical area anyways so speed was not an issue.

We are hoping to have an enduro series in the Northeast and are looking into this timing system. $4k is a a lot of money but for a reliable timing system it is not that bad.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

batts65 said:


> I was at the first event and I can say as a competitor I did not notice any issues that Bob is talking about.
> 
> This system was amazing, it was not at all an issue to stop and "time out" of the stage, most of the stages they tried to end where you would be at a technical area anyways so speed was not an issue.
> 
> We are hoping to have an enduro series in the Northeast and are looking into this timing system. $4k is a a lot of money but for a reliable timing system it is not that bad.


In the full $4K kit it looks like you only get 10 control units not including the start and finish, so you could run 5 special stages.

I recently raced an Enduro day in Whistler that was part of a larger 3 day multi stage event and we had 9 special timed stages strung out over 50km of trail. The flaik gps system was used, there were some teething issues and some racers didn't get any results. To use a system like the Sport Ident for a day like that you would need 18 control units.

The starter kit at $2k with 1 master and 11 units is much better value if you don't need to have the thermal printer print stubs for the racers. You can run six stages.

I think a comparable system can be made with with open source arduino's and rfid readers at about $30 per control unit.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

Bob W said:


> We wrote our own excel sheet to handle the timing of the stages. For our first event we only had one small glitch, but we stayed on schedule for when we said we would have results out. Second event everything worked perfect.


For your excel sheet did you have to manually input times or were you able to download them into excel?


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## Bob W (Jul 6, 2004)

*Excel*

Coudl download to the sheet once yo converted the dta. Nto hard at all...coming up with the sheet...took some time.


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## rhyko (Nov 10, 2008)

Does not look like there is a way of doing it really cheap then...?:madman: unless you are an electronics whizz kid.
I don't see why it cost so much, its just a magnetic signal that records a time onto a flash drive? Come on china start making me something cheap...

This is worth a read, seems people are coming up with some good ideas

cheap electronic punching using RFID tags - Attackpoint : Orienteering training, racing, running, navigation, and fitness


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## Verttii (Aug 20, 2009)

shirk said:


> I think a comparable system can be made with with open source arduino's and rfid readers at about $30 per control unit.


Now this would be reeeaallly interesting project... :thumbsup:


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## erik saunders (Mar 14, 2011)

For the vp dirt club enduro i used the chip.system same as cross races in so Cal. with rider time cards.

time cards were tyvek.

riders started in groups to top of the hill, no penalty for late arrival, no arrival times.

rider checked in, selected a start time.

start time was written on time card and a start sheet for each stage.

rider starts on time.by stop watch synchronized to race time.

at finish, rider trips time. time is written on time card. official notes stage time.

This system was easy. And gave riders insatnt times, full reults printed in 10minutes.

If any computer or chip failure, we still had watches and time cards... no worries...

It was affordable... we have another event nov 3 if you wanna see it in use... always open to critisism and improvement. 

vp-usa.com\enduro


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

From Adam Craig's blog post. The SportIdent system seems to be well liked by the riders. Adam has done all the Oregon series and it's good to hear a riders opinion on timing.



> Seven days of riding laid out on topo maps with navigational descriptions to lead us on our merry way. Aided by spartan, but sufficient, signage placed by the course marking crew, two lucky guys who rode a day ahead of us, showing the way. We also were given our timing chips. This is the amazing part. To start each Special Stage, you simply wave this card past a Belise, hung from a tree on a ridge some, it beeps, then you give 'er until you get to a valley, presumably, and careen into the arms of someone holding another Belise, and, beep, you're done. At the end of the day your chip is handed in and a paper printout of your times is immediately generated. Slick. An amazing system that makes racing multiple daily stages in the middle of nowhere, France, possible. We need this system for North American Enduros. Period.


Trans Provence 2012- The best riding of your life. | Adam Craig


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## rhyko (Nov 10, 2008)

*yo*

The format i used for my mates race gravity enduro:

I ended up cutting the numbers right down, largely helped by the huge down pour which also forced me to shorten the course by one timed section (from 5 to 4).
So we ended up with 15 entrants.
The timed sections varied from 2:30 to 3:30 for the stage winner and due to the rain was quite hard going and slow in places.
basically had a guy at the top and bottom recording and writing down the actual time, the important part of this was to synchronise watches 1st. i had the riders start in 20 second intervals in which ever order they decided.
This all worked out fine for us as riders were normally separated by seconds not tenths and the end results, the riders closest together were separated by 2 seconds and the rest were quite spread out.
I collected voluntary donations of all the riders and shared it out between the volunteers, we managed to do the timing with 6 of us as 2 people managed to time 2 different stages.

The event went down really well and i look forward to holding another one.
People have suggested doing a strava race, but it sounds like a bad idea to me.


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## Jarno H (Mar 21, 2013)

For the bigger events, and serious racing I would check the Sport Ident or Emitag setups. 
For the non serious event I am organizing with only 20-30 riders, we use synchronized digital watches.

Write down the start time, and finish time, enter it in an xls sheet after the racing is done and voila! 
It's not to the 10th of a second accurate, but its cheap, simple and accurate enough for a 2,5 days of riding / 8 Specials event.

more info on the event here:

The Blast - Epic Enduro Weekends -


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

Bumping my own thread.

We ended up purchasing a SportIdent system and very glad we did.

James at SportIdent put together a custom kit for us. Control units to run 3 stages and 100 cards for racers. So far we've run four great events of our six race series. These are "Toonie" races on Thursday nights, racers need to be a member of the NSMBA ($40/yr) and then it costs them just $2 to race. Our turns outs have been, 83, 76, 78, and 68. This is a HUGE jump from our previous XC/AM single lap races we had last year that struggled to get 6-10 racers.

We run a custom excel sheet for results. At sign in we allocate the cards numbers to the racers, this is the only manual part. As racers return their times are scanned in using the free software SI-Config. Some simple functions and a Vlookup function gives us results. I can generally run them in 10 minutes after the last racer has arrived in at the finish. 

Next stage is to actually run the scan times directly into a mysql database and have our website crunch the results live as people arrive. The spot where we host the race has really bad cell phone reception so I have not been overly motivated to complete this, we just got access to a high power cellular modem so this week we'll try the live timing. 

There have been several local races that have had some big failures in running enduro events without a robust timing system. Whole stages being thrown out due to bad results and 25% of racers times being lost/unusable. If enduro is to continue to grow bad results are not acceptable. For anyone else organizing events I strongly recommend the SportIdent system.


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## KRob (Jan 13, 2004)

Sounds good. Approximately how much did the set up cost you? How mobile are the units for each stage? We have a 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile hike in for a couple of our check points. Plus we have six timed sections (seven counting the pro only final stage, but we could use units already on the course for this one).

Thanks .


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

KRob said:


> Sounds good. Approximately how much did the set up cost you? How mobile are the units for each stage? We have a 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile hike in for a couple of our check points. Plus we have six timed sections (seven counting the pro only final stage, but we could use units already on the course for this one).
> 
> Thanks .


To get an idea on price the Enduro set is 5 stages and 50 racers for $2290.

They do a discount on bulk card purchases so the extra cards are less than the $17 each as posted.

Each extra stage would require 2x controls, one for stage start and one for stage end. They are $138 each. Again you might be able to roll it all into one custom package and get a better price. James at Sportident USA was great to work with.

At sign/finish in you need a windows laptop on top of the SportIdent system. You can use the free software without need to special event software if you are savy with excel.

The control units are the size of a mobile phone so they are perfect for remote stages, they are battery powered so nothing more needed than a volunteer and show them how to use the unit. The volunteer beeps the riders card and that starts their time. The time stamp is recorded onto the racers card and to the control unit. When the racer gets to the end of the stage they race to a stop and another volunteer beeps their card, again the time stamp is recorded to the card and the unit.

After the racer has finished all the stages they bring their card back to your start/finish spot and you scan in the card data to get your stage times. This is where we use an excel sheet to compile results subtracting the stage finish time from the stage start time for the race time. Add up all your stages to get total time. Our race is not split into age categories or divisions so we don't have to take the extra time split up all the results. I can process results less than 20 minutes after our last racer arrives and have them posted to our website.

The biggest difference compared to what most racers are accustom to is racing to a stop. At each stage finish instead of sprinting across the line they need to come to a complete stop so they can get scanned. We get the racers to mount the cards on their handlebars on the left side of the stem so that everyone is in the same spot. First race we tried on the wrist, but some people put it on their pack, or belt loop. Mid pack we've had some exact same times, but for the leaders there have always been decent 5+ second gaps that more than out weights any time lost at stage end scan out irregularities.

Our first year won't recoup the upfront costs, but we'll pay for the system many times over in future events. Because it's proving robust, accurate and easy to use we'll expand our week night series from 6 racers to 8 or 10 next year and look at hosting more weekend type events with a higher registration fee than our week night $2 events.


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## ARider (Feb 28, 2005)

erik saunders said:


> For the vp dirt club enduro i used the chip.system same as cross races in so Cal. with rider time cards.
> 
> time cards were tyvek.
> 
> ...


Didn't you still have issues/mistakes with results?

They used some sort of smart phone timing app for the China Peak Enduro, it failed and lost times for 2 of the 4 stages.

I am a huge fan of go when you want systems, they just tend to be a bit pricey for the reliable ones.


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## Vesa Suomalainen (Aug 9, 2013)

Here's another option to consider - a timing app called Webscorer that runs on an iPhone or an iPad and does not penalize you for being late for the start. It's a manual system (operator taps the device screen to record a time & bib / name), but the results processing, including web posting is fully automated.

Here's a detailed "how-to" article about the system, just released today:

How to time an enduro mountain-biking race with Webscorer

For full disclosure, I am involved in developing this software. I have personally timed or helped time a few dozen enduro races over the last 14 months.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

I know at least one event that had major issues with using Webscorer.

I see Oregon Enduro Series listed there, they've had multiple events this year with timing issues.

Cost of 6 iPads ain't cheap. 

We had two events in the pouring rain this year, iPads would have been destroyed.


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## Vesa Suomalainen (Aug 9, 2013)

shirk said:


> I know at least one event that had major issues with using Webscorer.
> 
> I see Oregon Enduro Series listed there, they've had multiple events this year with timing issues.
> 
> ...


Any manual timing system (or any timing system for that matter) is only as good as the operator. Enduro-timing is challenging, no matter how to attempt to do it. The Webscorer system is not 100% fool-proof, but we've seen rookie operators succeed with first-time volunteers timing 3-stage enduros.

Most of the race organizers aren't buying new iPads - they look for timing volunteers that have an iPad or have access to an iPad. You can promote someone else's iPad to use your Webscorer PRO account for the weekend at no extra cost.

The Oregon Enduro Series decided to try Jaguar chip-timing this year - so their timing issues are unrelated to Webscorer.

In the rain, you'd use a canopy / umbrella to protect the device from water. I have timed many races with an iPad in driving rain - some moisture is ok, you'll just want to wipe the screen dry from time to time.

If you'd mention the race name where the issues took place, I can look into what may have happened. We always recommend a paper backup in case something goes wrong - whether it's a setup issue, operator mistake or device problem. The results can be always be fixed up by downloading from the website to Excel & re-posting.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

Any more input here? We're looking to increase the quality of our race management this year and enlarge the draw to our event(s). Moving to a more automated and less volunteer-dependent timing system is a no-brainer; it's just a matter of choosing the right one.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

I am still really happy with SportIdent.

For the upcoming season I plan to use the system for 8 week night Toonie races and then another five weekend events with a cap of 200 riders. I have full confidence in the system.


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## jlf.ski.bike.sail (May 5, 2006)

sport ident is great if you want timing that isnt accurate to less than a second.. its not racing if your not racing across the finish line.

many enduro stages are down downhill trails. could you imagine a downhill race where you need to ride into a person holding a timing device?

I think it might makes sense for long stage races like the trans provence. but if you are running an enduro race that has sub 10 minute stage times then you need atleast 10th of a second accuracy or otherwise people will tie.

3 Peaks MTB Enduro CRASH! - YouTube

looks like a good idea...


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

jlf.ski.bike.sail said:


> sport ident is great if you want timing that isnt accurate to less than a second.. its not racing if your not racing across the finish line.
> 
> many enduro stages are down downhill trails. could you imagine a downhill race where you need to ride into a person holding a timing device?
> 
> ...


Enduro doesn't have to be a high speed DH finish. Knowing that riders need to ride to a stop you need to design your course finish to take that into account.

Riding full speed across a grassy field is poor course design. Put in some chicanes then a tight corner and you'll slow the riders down to a reasonable pace. Or finish on a slight uphill.

The cost difference between running events with SportIdent vs something with 10th of second and high speed capture is HUGE. It's not a small difference it is many orders of magnitude different. It can also limit your trail choice depending on how much equipment is needed and requires more manpower.

I've raced the EWS round at Whistler and run our own local events with SportIdent and unless you are one of the top five EWS racers the race to a stop with 1 second accuracy will not make a difference.


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## jlf.ski.bike.sail (May 5, 2006)

i agree. if you want accurate timing and run an event that caters to all racers, including those at the professional level. you need to spend a lot on your timing system. 

if you look at the finish times of any of the northwest enduro series, there are several instances where stage times are less than half of a second apart from each other. this occurs in all classes. it makes a huge difference. you just dont notice it when you dont have accurate timing.


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## jlf.ski.bike.sail (May 5, 2006)

Even for the trans provence sportident wasnt accurate enough. the difference in overall time between nicolas lau and jerome clementz was, according to the timing system, 1 second. what would the result have been if they had 1/10th of a second accuracy for each stage...would it have been different?



1st	LAU Nicolas	Cube Action Team	PRO	00:38:25	(2)	00:20:41	(1)	00:20:07	(1)	00:29:44	(1)	00:27:50	(1)	00:24:02	(2)	02:40:49

2nd	CLEMENTZ Jérôme	Cannondale Overmountain / Mavic	PRO	00:37:58	(1)	00:20:43	(2)	00:20:10	(2)	00:29:45	(2)	00:28:07	(2)	00:24:07	(3)	02:40:50

3rd	BAREL Fabien	Canyon Factory Enduro Team / MAVIC	PRO	00:38:44	(3)	00:21:25	(5)	00:20:11	(3)	00:33:39	(17)	00:28:26	(3)	00:23:51	(1)	02:46:16


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## Salespunk (Sep 15, 2005)

PCA uses Webscorer and it has been great. The only issue I have seen is one iPad ran out of battery at a race and the start had to be postponed while it was recharged. This had to be user error and is definitely not a Webscorer issue. It is great to have real time stats for the racers.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

I just purchased a Sportident system for the Cascadia Dirt Cup. Believe me, I looked at every possible option from webscorer to chip timing and always kept coming back to Sportident for 4 main reasons.

1. Cost- for the money you get a simple and robust timing system that is ideal for enduro. Yeah, you have to come to a controlled stop at each finish line but its part of the race and as important as nailing any technical section along the stage.

2. Manpower- last year we had to have a minimum of 12 timers to pull off a 4 stage enduro. (1 at each start and 2 at each finish) We also had to train them and make sure they got to where they needed to be on race day. Easily one, if not the most stressfull part of the day. With Sportident you smply don't need all this manpower.

3. Fast results- the main difference between Sportident and all the other systems like chip timing or even manual timing is the times are stamped on the pCards the racers carry. When they are done they come over to the timing tent and the timer swipes the pCard and the racer gets a printout of their times. This equals instant gratification. With all the other systems you have to wait for the times to come in from the course and then get computed into results. This takes a while and if there are errors it just makes the wait longer.

4. Enduro specific software- before I purchased Sportident I contacted eeryone I could find that was using it and asked them what their experience was with the system and came across someone who wrote their own enduro specific software for the Sportident system. Its really simple to use and I feel like I could take on timing and I'm definitely not computer saavy. This sealed the deal for me. All the other systems I looked into had pretty good result software for something like a xc race but not for enduro. 

We have some field testing planned for March and I will give an update to how everything worked.


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## Swissam (Apr 8, 2008)

jlf.ski.bike.sail said:


> sport ident is great if you want timing that isnt accurate to less than a second.. its not racing if your not racing across the finish line.
> 
> many enduro stages are down downhill trails. could you imagine a downhill race where you need to ride into a person holding a timing device?
> 
> ...


I'm thinking about organising an enduro series here in Switzerland and this thread, as well as the "true cost of racing" thread have been a tremendous help. After watching that YouTube crash I was wondering, does the time count if only the rider crosses the finish line? Lol


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

Thoughts on the SPORTident printer package? I see that some of you are using it. It's pretty spendy for a thermal printer, but obviously the package includes more that that.


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## hardboiled (Jun 10, 2006)

Salespunk said:


> PCA uses Webscorer and it has been great. The only issue I have seen is one iPad ran out of battery at a race and the start had to be postponed while it was recharged. This had to be user error and is definitely not a Webscorer issue. It is great to have real time stats for the racers.


the California Enduro Series used Webscorer last year and there were major timing issues. one event lost data for 2 of 4 stages, another event had mistakes throughout the results that led to a winner being announced and then retracted a few days later, with new results all up and down the results sheets. I heard from other racers of messed up results at a minimum of one other race in the series (ie at least 3 out of 4 races in the series). timing seems like a pretty big challenge for the race format, and correlated with the other challenge which is too much standing around/waiting -- for timing personnel (and possibly medical) to move from one stage to another, for racers to start stages, for results etc.

timing to 1-second accuracy is obviously not ideal, especially for events with short stages. also for the "racing to a stop" timing systems, what do you if a rider is close to overtaking someone at the end of the stage, the results will be even more compromised if the overtaking rider has to slow down for the rider in front and then wait for the slower rider to get scanned first. this format of timing seems like a stopgap and not the long term solution.

personally I think the closer an Enduro event can come to operating like an XC race, the better. by that I mean a single start (by category) and then you're off and racing and dont really stop (much) until you finish. not to say that climbs should be timed, but the delays between stages should be minimal so that you're not standing around at the start of a timed stage waiting, or having to wait at the end of a timed stage before you can begin the next transfer. then fast(er) and accurate results at the end of the race (running overall-results at the end of each stage would be even better so strategy can be adjusted). call me captain obvious, but in my experience there's a lot of room for improvement, and as the kinks get ironed out the racing will be even more fun.

it'll be interesting to keep tabs on this thread to see if options improve this season.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

The print out set is great but it has some limitations. As a timer and race director its awesome to be able to give racers their times as they roll in from the course. Racers love it because they know their times and they can walk around and compare them with other racers.

The limitations are the price and format. While you can add your event name and a few other things it only gives split times so you have to know what you're looking at to get your times. It will give you a total time for the whole course but not the total time for the special stages.

What we do is when a racer comes to turn in his pCard we print out the times with the thermal printer and highlight their stage times. Then we scan the pCard into the computer using the JAS Scoring System and then write down the stage cumulative time on their printout and give it to the racer. Here is a test printout I did before a race we timed last weekend.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

I agree that 1 second accuracy is not ideal but there may be a solution. I found this on the Sportident website and now working to get it intergrated with our software. 

"Advanced applications:
0.1 second readout is possible for overall time (program Start and Finish units in SI-Config), but stages will be 1 second precision"


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## oldm8 (Dec 6, 2011)

Anymore updates on Sportident system and software setup? Looking at buying it for our local series and trying to sync 8 digital watches with 12 timers is a bit much. The system works but 2 people are stuck entering times during the entire event and the less people we need to run the timing, the more of us that can race.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

I've been very happy with Sprortident and JAS. The great thing about the JAS software is the developer is always upgrading it. He just upgraded it to support multi-day enduros and is working on an upgrade where race categories can run different courses.


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## oldm8 (Dec 6, 2011)

sockeyered said:


> I've been very happy with Sprortident and JAS. The great thing about the JAS software is the developer is always upgrading it. He just upgraded it to support multi-day enduros and is working on an upgrade where race categories can run different courses.


That's great to hear. We just had 74 riders at yesterday's race so was a lot of manual data entry when you have 4 stages. Do you have the pcard system or the SI-card system? I've used the SI-card system in the 2W enduro in rotorua and was great but it's a fair bit more than the p-card setup.


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## sockeyered (Feb 6, 2011)

Yes, the manual data entry is rough going...

We use the p-card system.


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## oldm8 (Dec 6, 2011)

Thanks very much for the replies.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

If you go with SPORTIDENT, JAS is the way to go, IMO. The level of support for the JAS software has been fantastic. We've been really happy with the combination.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

We are now into our third season with SportIdent.

Still working great for us.

Last season I started using Meos software, it's a freeware that was designed for Orienteering but I've been able to set it up to work well for enduro.

MeOS

The tick to getting just the stages you want is to set the start control for a stage to "no timing" this then omits the transfer time out of your total calculation.

I really like that it has the ability to write the results info directly to a db. With a wee bit of custom code we have live results straight to the web as people scan in. It updates every 10 seconds to out db. People can then check their times on their smart phone.

Our start/finish locations don't have good access to power so the thermal printers were not going to work for us.

I looked at JAS but it didn't offer anything that the orienteering freeware didn't already do. Being a non-profit trail organization I had to keep costs to an absolute minimum.


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## oldm8 (Dec 6, 2011)

This just turned up in the mail


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

shirk said:


> I looked at JAS but it didn't offer anything that the orienteering freeware didn't already do. Being a non-profit trail organization I had to keep costs to an absolute minimum.


I'll suggest that there's one thing JAS offers that freeware doesn't: support. Jason has been fantastic about helping us out with database issues that have cropped up here and there (mostly due to user error on our part). I fumble around in Access, but that's about the limit of my database kung-fu.

For anyone using SPORTident, their new Config Plus utility is orders of magnitude more user friendly than the old Config software. If you haven't looked at their site recently, it's worth downloading.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

Speaking of the new Config Plus utility, the battery display is odd: this screen cap shows how it tells me that we've used 10% of the battery capacity:










James at SPORTident US checked with the developers and confirmed that this is in fact a battery with 90% capacity remaining. Hopefully this saves some of you the freak out I had.


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## shirk (Mar 24, 2004)

Thanks for the heads up on the new Si Config, will check it out. 

We've been going 3 seasons of racing on our batteries, time to take a closer look at just how much juice we have remaining.


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

They estimate 3-5 years or ~20K stamps IIRC. 

The new utility is pretty slick. It's really fast to sync the clocks in the base stations, for one thing.


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## nigelhicks (Jul 13, 2015)

Hi all

seems you guys have a lot of knowledge with the SportsIdent systems.
We have purchased one for use in our Regional Enduro series here in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa, and have tested it a bit, but are having issues.

We purchased the system with the following: 
2x BSM7 USB main stations (Orange)
2x BSF8 check and clear control stations
10x BSF11 control stations for stages.

at the last race this weekend we had the following issues.
- 2 riders had no time at all (although their chips "scanned" at each point and the lights came on at the BSF11 stations). 
- 1 rider had a time of 1 second for a stage (which was 6 min long). 
- 1 rider took over an hour to finish a 3 minute stage? 
- 1 rider had a point where he had check out of stage before checking in?
- 1 rider missed the scan point at the end of a stage and went back to scan but he had no finish time for the stage.

The operator is using his own software and I think this may be the issue.
But the chips not scanning sounds like they are full???

Any ideas from the guys in the know would be awesome.

Cheers
Nige


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## evasive (Feb 18, 2005)

I'm not sure of the capacity of a pCard, but I doubt you filled one up. The only times I've seen one not scan or clear is when 2 cards are stuck together.

Our system is a little different- we have 1 BSF7 and 11 BSF8s (10 configured as beginning and end of 5 stages and 1 configured as a clear station). But the way the cards are stamped and read should be the same. 

I think you're right in that the timing software may be the issue. Are you describing the results as you're seeing them from the 3rd party software or the raw data? The SPORTident system itself is pretty robust and from my experience, I'd bet you have the correct time stamps on the cards and may be able to recover them (if they haven't been cleared). Try reading the cards directly using the SI Config Plus software from SPORTident. It's easy to do- just make sure the BSF7 is plugged in and hit the "read cards" button.


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## nigelhicks (Jul 13, 2015)

Thanks for the reply.
The Si-P card has capacity for 20 intermediate times (from the website).

But I agree that i think the issue is a software one. Unfortunately I am not part of the operating team who does the timing, so I dont know if it was a raw data or 3rd party software issue where the times were wrong.

I think it was an import error somewhere into the software.

SO will look around at what other Freeware software is available to run the system.
I will download the SI Config Plus software and go to the timing guys and sit with them and check everything. Because this was really weird!


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## jbella (Dec 22, 2005)

I've been trying to find a cheap and simple timing solution for the enduro style races my club want to arrange, but I have failed. I've ridden races with the SportIdent system and it worked quite well but it's too expensive. So I have decided on making my own DIY system.

Since we are a small club with small races we don't want to have staff at all stages. That means that the scanning devices must be cheap, if they are to be left unattended in the woods (and potentially stolen).

I have managed to put together a small kit that probably will cost around $30 per unit (I've only built 2 so far). RFID tags comes in lots of variant but I will be testing a wristband style costing about $2.

The system actually works now, but I have to do quite a lot more testing before using it for a race. There is also a small PC software that is used to download all times from the RFID tags.


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