"There is no downside for us in using ACTIVE Results."

Horizon Race Solutions is a timing and event management company located in Atlanta, Georgia.

The organization was tasked with timing the Atlanta Dogwood Festival Mimosa 5K, a scenic race which culminates in a mimosa toast at an 82-year-old festival in Piedmont Park. An Atlanta Journal Constitution Peachtree Road Race qualifier, the Mimosa 5K has grown to over 1,500 participants.

A Trio of Challenges

The Timer: Timing is a logistically complex task with incredible pressure to deliver fast and accurate results. In the past, Horizon manually processed runner information, including downloading, formatting and uploading multiple spreadsheets. “In the past, we published results to our website, emailed them to the race director and posted to a few other websites,” says owner Sloan Ware, of his previous, tedious process.

Race Director: Managing a race is a stressful job. Directors know that timing inaccuracies, or even delayed results posting, play heavily into participants’ satisfaction with the event. Managing inquiries and disputes from runners about results is a concern for race directors and timers alike.

Participants: Runners don’t like the slow lane. In today’s digital world, event participants expect to get their results and have inquiries handled fast.

ACTIVE Lifecycle Solutions

For the first time at the 2018 Mimosa 5K, Horizon implemented the full ACTIVE Lifecycle: Super Elite Readers with UHF technology, ACTIVE Timing, ACTIVE Results and ACTIVEWorks® Endurance.

Because the ACTIVEWorks® Endurance platform pushes all data to ACTIVE Timing, Horizon was able to sync participant records with the data captured from participants' UHF tags and Super Elite Readers to the scoring platform–no list uploads required.

ACTIVE Results 3.0 was another key to Horizon’s winning timing strategy. This new solution allows timers and event directors to immediately share results with participants on the ACTIVE Results platform by automatically syncing registrant information from ACTIVEWorks® Endurance and times from the IPICO hardware to ACTIVE Timing. When using the ACTIVE Lifecycle, timers can also take advantage of pushing live results to ACTIVE Results during the race.

In past events, this seamless data flow wasn’t possible. “The time from getting results to formatting them and uploading them to our site probably took about 15 minutes,” Ware explains. “The more important time savings is from the participant's perspective and how long it takes for them to find their results. With the new ACTIVE Results, everything is published in real time. When a participant runs the event, they can find their time instantly.”

Benefits, All Around

ACTIVE Results 3.0 solves a whole host of challenges for race timers, starting with posting accurate results at a new rate of speed. Throughout the event it also allows for one-click publishing of results by the timer, with no extra work or manual integration, to a live leaderboard that can be viewed from any browser.

In addition to saving precious time for timers, Ware also notes a greatly improved experience for race directors. Participants can send requests directly from the ACTIVE Results event page, eliminating the need for directors to field inquiries.

Of course, the speed of results posting is irrelevant if the numbers aren’t correct. Ware’s final read rates were in the 98%-99% range. “No one came through and didn't get a read that I saw, and I haven’t had anyone reach out to me and say their time was wrong,” he reports.

A Total Solution

“There is no downside for us in using ACTIVE Results. All it takes is one extra mouse click within ACTIVE Timing.”

The ACTIVE Results 3.0 Solution:

• Participants can see results immediately after the event.
• Track a live leaderboard on the event’s ACTIVE Results page.
• Provides easy access to timing information for Event Directors.
• Minimize race day results inquiries.
• When used with ACTIVE Timing, disputes are solved with the tap of a button.

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