Organising and timing canoe sprint competitions has very specific requirements for a race management, timing and result solution. Typically these events have many categories and races. A ‘draw’ places athletes in a race and they ‘progress’ through the competition following a pre-defined schema. RaceGorilla offers these and more competition management and timing functionalities for sport events with a ‘regatta format’.
About the sport
Canoe sprint takes place on a flatwater course and races are contested by two types of boat, canoe (C) and kayak (K). In a canoe, the paddler competes in a striding position using a single-blade paddle, in contrast to the double-bladed paddle used in a sitting position in a kayak. At international level the discipline is competed at four distances from 200m to 5000m, both individually and in teams of up to four. Each discipline is categorised by boat type, number of competitors per boat, gender, and race distance, meaning the example of C2M 500m is the canoe male doubles 500m. [source]
Event management and timing
Whereas many of the incumbent canoe sprint timing systems need an extensive hardware setup like a local server, lengths of cables, multiple computers, etc. Everything you need to sprint on RaceGorilla is one laptop and two smartphones. Since also everything (like start- & result lists) are instantly available online it greatly reduces the need for printed booklets, start lists and results.
The below phases describe the stages of a Canoe sprint competition on RaceGorilla. The timing happens in the RaceGorilla Pro app. Whereas all other actions are done in the RaceGorilla dashboard.
- Configuration
- Draw
- Timing (mobile app) & progressions
- Results
To configure a canoe sprint competition on the RaceGorilla platform a spreadsheet is used for the list of categories, races, participants and progression rules. All the data can be easily (bulk) uploaded instead of doing manual entries one by one.
When all data is set-up and participants are uploaded, then the draw can be done. Draw’s are done by selecting the categories and the serie to which you want to draw. Some categories might start in the qualification for instance whereas categories with few participants can be drawn directly in the final serie.
The next step is to start timing in the RaceGorilla Pro timing app. Each configured race is mass started. Finish timing is done based on the lane number with the KeyPad timing view. Once the first finishes are registered, directly the progressions for the finished race can be triggered. This then populates the start list for the next race.
During the race, but also afterwards, the (live) results are available both in the dashboard and the public results viewer.
Partnership with Federations
The canoe sprint functionality has been developed in strong collaboration with Peddelsport Vlaanderen (Belgium) and Watersportverbond (Netherlands). Co-development with strong partners is a exclusive offering from RaceGorilla in order to tailor specific features to niche sports.
Benefits
The benefits that race organisers instantly notice when running their events with the RaceGorilla software are:
- Reduced preparation time
- Less paper work
- Easier onboarding of timing team members and/or volunteers
- Increased race experience for athletes & audience
Photo credits: Peddelsport Vlaanderen
