Can you imagine: not so long ago, smartphones were still young, apps were often just funny games and 4G coverage was not very common or expensive.
Despite that, this was when we first got the idea of building an app to run a canoe slalom competition, using just a couple of mobile phones. The app would connect the volunteers along the race course. It would collect and distribute the race data and publish it to a live canoe slalom results web page.
Our ultimate goal was to run a canoe slalom competition like the sport itself: with fast and clean results.
Over the last years the RaceGorilla software has been used and refined over and over. It appeared to be a challenge to fit the needs of many different race organisers into one timing and judging system. By now RaceGorilla is used in multiple countries as the main software platform. More and more race coaches and organisers are using RaceGorilla for their events.
Use Case: Canoe Kayak Canada
Recently Canoe Kayak Canada choose RaceGorilla as their system to run their national canoe slalom competitions. They can run small competition manually and use the Blueboxes and photocells to obtain more accuracy.
The preparation time for the competition is reduced. Hardware setup is minimal as with the Bluebox no cabling is needed from start to finish. Software setup is an easy step-by-step process on a web-based dashboard. The main advantage however, is that less volunteers are needed and the volunteers make less mistakes.
The Race Gorilla app is excellent and we are getting better and more efficient with it each race. I’m very impressed at how much easier it is to run races with this program. It really allows us to minimize preparation and simplify the work for our race volunteers.
James Cartwright (canoe Kayak Canada)
What has changed in the Canoe Slalom Competition?
As the sport is still quite young, Canoe slalom competitions are still evolving. In recent years, not only the runs got faster, but also the format of the competitions. Everything to make the sport more attractive for television and live viewers.
As competitions are often run with heats, semi final and finals nowadays, participants need to know their results directly after their run. Just like they are used to in any international competition.
Therefore, a recent feature that has been added are the progression: participants progressing to the next round, can be selected and will be placed in the reverse order into the next round or finals.
The entire back-office of any complicated canoe slalom competition is cut up in easy steps in the web based dashboard.
After starting to use RaceGorrilla, our local races got more organized. Less paperwork and no more hassle of collecting penalties.
Kriss Ozols (Latvian Canoe Association)
The live result feature made us feel like an international races
Start using RaceGorilla?
If you would like to start using RaceGorilla, start by reading through some of the tutorials, create an account and test it for yourself. You should be able to have live results and penalties online in just a few minutes. If you still need help, do not hesitate to write us an email at Support @racegorilla.com.
