Following an initial announcement in
late 2021, World Triathlon is now pleased to announce the world’s first
competition trial of the RaceRanger drafting detection system. The first trial
will be held this Saturday, 21 January, at the Tauranga Half middle distance
triathlon, part of the Mount Festival event in New Zealand. This will be the
first time this truly ground-breaking new system is tested in a competition.
RaceRanger is an electronic sensor
system designed to improve fairness around the issue of drafting on the bike
section of non-drafting triathlons. Currently, determination of drafting
distances by athletes and the technical officials policing them are made with
subjective naked eye judgements.
Developed by two triathletes from New
Zealand, in collaboration with the World Triathlon Sport department, RaceRanger
comprises two electronic units that triathletes in non-drafting competitions
attach to their bicycles, one at the front and one at the rear.
The system makes accurate
measurements of the distance between athletes while they ride. The rear unit
features 3 coloured lights that signal backwards to a following competitor,
providing information about their following distance. In future, the system
will detect when infringements are occurring and send this data to technical
officials patrolling the course, via a tablet app interface. The official will
assesses the situation in real-time and can then make a decision on whether a
penalty needs to be applied through the system.
“World Triathlon is one of the most
progressive and innovative sporting organisations in the world, and we have
proved this approach multiple times. After our team having worked with
RaceRanger for over a year, it is time now to test it during an event for the
first time, and this is great and exciting news for the whole triathlon
community”, said World Triathlon President and IOC Member, Marisol Casado. “We
at World Triathlon are always committed with making the athlete experience
better, providing new technologies that will increase the fairness of the
competition for all athletes, especially the ones competing in longer distance
formats”.
RaceRanger Founder and CEO James
Elvery explains: “We are thrilled to finally bring RaceRanger into the real
world this week, to be used on bikes in a race! It is our long held and firm
belief that RaceRanger will fundamentally change our sport for the better,
improving transparency around the drafting rules and removing subjective
guesses by both athletes and officials. Using RaceRanger for the first time
really is one of those technological advancements that just make immediate
sense to the users, and it is hard to imagine going back to the ‘old way’.
Literally years of work and countless
hours from our team and partners have gone into getting us here. While the
system is not yet fully operational and 100% polished, we feel it is important
to get it in the hands of athletes as early as possible. In sport, as in
product development, there is nothing like a race to accelerate progress! “
RaceRanger devices will be fitted to
all 24 elite athlete’s bikes before Saturday’s event. Triathlon New Zealand
& World Triathlon technical officials, along with the athletes themselves,
will evaluate it’s performance and provide feedback to the RaceRanger team to
aid it’s continued development.
More race trials are planned through
the New Zealand summer months, and after evaluating the first real pilot, World
Triathlon and the RaceRanger team will work on implementing the devices in
major international non-drafting events.
Despite just now being in initial
competition trials, RaceRanger has been shortlisted as a finalist for the
Outstanding Tech Product category at the inaugural Global Triathlon Awards to
also be held this weekend in Nice, France.
World Triathlon looks forward to
ongoing collaboration with the New Zealand-based RaceRanger team, to bring it
to use in the wider sport, with the goal of improving fairness and athlete
experiences at non-drafting events around the world.
ABOUT WORLD TRIATHLON
World Triathlon is the international
governing body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of triathlon and all
related multisport disciplines around the world, including duathlon, aquathlon,
cross triathlon and winter triathlon. Triathlon made its Olympic debut in
Sydney 2000, with a third medal event, the Mixed Team Relay, added to the
programme at Tokyo 2020, while para triathlon was first added to the Paralympic
programme at Rio 2016. World Triathlon is proudly committed to the development
of the sport worldwide, with inclusion, equality, sustainability and
transparency at our core as we seek to help triathletes at all levels of the
sport to be extraordinary.
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