When organizing a rafting competition, you will need timekeeping for all stages. In addition to that you will need gate judging for the slalom. RaceGorilla offers an advanced online platform for timing a rafting race. The stage results will be available live on the internet. The results from all stages are combined in an overall ranking that at the moment needs to be generated in a separate excel format with some advanced macro’s.
As always, timing and scoring can be done with just a couple of volunteers using their smartphone. For official championships we recommend to use photocells and the BlueBox for more accuracy.

Timing a rafting race

Rafting races have individual starts to begin with in the sprint event. The sprint event determines the pairs for the head to head. Head to head races  are held in a knock-out system. The winner of each pair is proceeding to the next round, until the last two teams battle for first place in the final.
In slalom 8 to 14 gates have to be navigated in two run. The fastest run including penalties is used for the ranking. A gate touched adds 5 penalty points to the time, a gate missed of navigated in the wrong direction adds fifty seconds to the time. In the downriver event, 4 to 8 rafts paddle a course of 20 to 60 minutes. Sometimes a Le Mans start is used.

Overall results

If you can not wait to start immediately, start the step-by-step tutorial to time and score a RaceGorilla Rafting competition.

For all stages in the event, points are given in order of ranking. In the sprint a maximum of 100 points can be won, in the head to head 200 points, in the slalom 300 points and in the downriver 400 points. The following teams will receive a percentage of this points declining by their position in the stage ranking.
To check all scores and to handle protest and inquiries, an online dashboard is available for the race management. Changes can be made by the race management, even after the app closes the race or run. To manage the race, volunteers and the devices used, several levels of access are possible. Split times are sometimes used, especially in the downriver event. In some cases it is a good idea to use a split timing point to train a new timer or to be used by the speaker to update the audience on site. To keep the race organisation simple, just use one smartphone at the start and one at the finish. If there are enough volunteers and devices, it is good to have some extra split times taken.

Go ahead! start a competition

Go ahead and start you competition in demo mode, registering and practice is free up to 10 participants. If you practiced enough and want to start a larger training or competition set your event to “training” or “competition”. See our pricing page for more information.

After reading through the tutorials and when you know the basics about RaceGorilla, you can start your own competition. As we are passionate about rafting as well, we prepared an Excel sheet containing macros to export the start list to RaceGorilla and import the stage results to generate the overall standings. With the provided instructions, you should be able to have a rafting competition without our help.
Follow the step-by-step tutorial to time and score a RaceGorilla Rafting competition.
Download the RaceGorilla overall standings Excel format

Have a look at this competition with canoe slalom, downriver and rafting (slalom and sprint): Results
or a full result competition.

If you do have questions, do not hesitate to ask: support@racegorilla.com