Images: RaceRanger.com
By Kent Gray/Triathlon.kiwi
The rise and rise of RaceRanger continues apace with the Kiwi draft detection system set to be used by World Triathlon at their Multisport World Championships in Ibiza, Spain next month.
After successful trials at Mount Festival of Multisport in Tauranga, Challenge Wanaka, Ironman New Zealand and Ironman 70.3 Geelong, RaceRanger will be used to assist Technical Officials (TO) with draft marshalling at the Long Distance World Championships on May 7, 2023.
“We’d like to thank World Triathlon for the opportunity to be part of the Long Distance World Championships, and for all their support and input from the beginning of our journey to this point,” RaceRanger CEO & Co-Founder James Elvery said.
Athlete and TO feedback has seen inevitable bugs in the system’s functionality ironed out across the four Australasian events.
“The product that is available now, and that will be used in Ibiza, is finally ready to be applied to top-level competition as an officiating aid,” Elvery said.
“We learned a lot from our trial events. The main things we have adjusted have been the buffer zones. We changed what the different coloured lights refer to, and also the distance thresholds for them to change colour.”
“We now have a red light for riding within the 12m draft zone, a blue light for a 2m last warning zone from 12m to 14m, and finally an orange light for a 3m ‘first contact’ zone from 14-17m.”
The process of including additions to the World Triathlon competition rules, to account for RaceRanger or similar technologies in the future, will be part of World Triathlon’s standard technical process for reviewing rules, the governing body said in a media release.
The process can take several months of work, before submission to the World Triathlon Executive Board for ratification.
“We see a huge potential for the RaceRanger system to improve fairness in non-drafting triathlons around the world, by removing the subjective nature of drafting penalty decisions,” said Gergely Markus, World Triathlon Sport Director.
“This includes a number of para tri categories that could feature the RaceRanger system, which we will test at the 2023 World Triathlon Para Championships that will take place in Pontevedra in September.”
