March 28, 2001--Monterey, California - BikeResults.com, a leading company for providing value-based solutions for the cycling community, together with partners ChampionChip of Holland, developer of a radio frequency timing chip, and Timberline Timing Systems, an event timing company, blew the socks off athletes and spectators at the Mercury-Sea Otter Classic held Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, CA.
For the first time ever in a mass start mountain biking event in the U.S., competitors wore small transponder chips about the size of a quarter around their ankles. Receiver mats were then placed on the course so when the athlete crossed over the mat, the radio frequency identification unique to that chip was activated and recorded in the BikeResults.com compute center.
The three groups worked harmoniously to provide near realtime results to the thousands of athletes and spectators flooding the raceway and the BikeResults.com & IBM Cyber Results Trailer. The chips have been used many times before in Triathlons and Marathons, so this race tested further the capabilities of the system. (Read about the partnership between Global Reach Sports and IBM here.)
The Sea Otter Classic attracted over 7,000 athletes and 45,000 spectators participating during the four day event. Everyone was ecstatic to have such timely and accurate results. As a consequence, the final awards ceremony took place in the late afternoon, soon after the last rider crossed the finish line. That was the first time the award ceremony beat nightfall in the entire history of the event!
Gail Moore, co-owner of Timberline Timing, had nothing but praise for Global Reach Sports for the success of the weekend when she said, "From the custom Delphi Programming to handle the flow of results to the integration of the various events to the BikeResults.com & IBM Cyber-Results Trailer, the folks at Global Reach Sports contributed greatly to the success of this event."
BikeResults.com operates with the primary purpose of bringing value to all members of the cycling community: from athletes to promoters to officials to fans, with a particular emphasis to grassroots development. The company is part of the portfolio of Global Reach Sports properties with the cycling community driving the direction with their content. They have created the largest collection of bike race results on the Internet and are the first cycling organization to create 1) Individual Competition Resumes for every competitor and 2) A Comprehensive, Cross-Discipline Ranking System that ranks the rider against other competitors from all over the world.
In many sports events people compete, with one another, with themselves and with time. For active sports events the ChampionChip company has revolutionized timing. In 1994 the company introduced an automatic timing system, which can not only time the finish but also split and start times. This made net times for every individual athlete possible.
TTS provides event timing and othe data management services to various events throughout the U.S., with the main focus on triathlons.