Organizing and timing canoe slalom races with RaceGorilla is as easy as possible. Creating good results fast, used to be very hard when timing canoe slalom races. Especially getting all the penalties from all the gate judges, used to involve a lot of paperwork and manual labor.

The developers of RaceGorilla are experienced international canoe slalom paddlers, they know what they are doing. They solved both the individual timing and complex judging component with this app. It is possible to time multiple runs and as many categories as needed. For a race organizer, there is no need to invest in expensive hardware, just gather some volunteers with their smartphone and start your race.

The results will be presented live and in full detail. Just as in international racing, penalties for each gate are displayed in the internet results by just clicking on the athlete’s name. Try it for yourself or first have a look at these results: Kids slalom in Augsburg or the Latvian Championships

Timing Canoe Slalom Races

RaceGorilla presents all tasks of the organizing team in small pieces and in a very user friendly app. Volunteers use their own iPhone or Android smartphone. They just download the app, create an account and log in to the their specific task at the race.
Times and scores are synchronized on all connected smartphones and results are managed on a server as soon as they are validated in the app. The results are displayed directly on a web page. Timing canoe slalom races used to be expensive and difficult but with RaceGorilla it’s as easy as it gets.

Timing accuracy in Canoe slalom

Canoe slalom races have individual starts at about 60 seconds interval. There are three boat types: K1 (individual kayak), C1 (individual canoe) and C2 (double canoe).  A slalom course is about 100 seconds (at 250 to 300 meter) there are normally one to three paddlers on course. It is possible that slow athletes get overtaken by faster ones during the race or close finish situations may occur. The finisher can handle these situations without a problem. It is easy to swap finish times in the app before the are published.

Times are displayed in 1/100 of a second and mostly timed using photocells. RaceGorilla is designed to make timing as easy as possible, so photocells are not needed. Hand timing will be accurate enough for small to mid-size canoe slalom races. (see this blog). It is possible to use times from third party devices such as finish camera or photocells. The RaceGorilla BlueBox sends times from an Alge Timy or Tag Heuer device directly to the smartphone. To know more about the accuracy, have a look at our Blog about this subject.

Canoe Slalom Race formats

For canoe slalom there is a default race format available. You can use it for testing and training. When you have got an official race, you set the number of judge sections and gates per section according to your actual race plan. You can also set any number of categories and more round like semifinals and finals.

Default canoe slalom format: Best of 2 runs

• 4 sections
• 16 gates,
• 2 runs
• 1 category (mixed)
• Score format: 0, 2, 50

Do you want to learn more?

Try it yourself: Just download the app and experience how easy it is!
If you do find it hard to get going, you can read our Quick Start Guide.

Have a look at this video report to see RaceGorilla used in a canoe slalom race. Have a look at this picture report of the Dutch national championship to learn more about the total setup of a slalom race.

If you have any questions, please send us a message.