2008 Gold Coast Marathon - A Technological Triumph

A good soldier, they say, when his drill sergeant yells, "Jump!" will reply "How High!"

Here at Timing Sports, our drill sergeant's name is Cameron Hart and he is the general manager of the Gold Coast Marathon. When Cameron begins a sentence with "Can you guys …" we interrupt and say, "Yes we can. Now, what do you need?"

Back in early 2006, Cameron called us over to the Gold Coast and told us about years and years of dreadful timing performance from a range of timing contractors ill equipped for the task. "Can you fix this?" he asked. Timing Sports took over the timing of the Gold Coast Marathon in 2006 and it was the first ever major event we timed. It was quite a baptism with 8m wide start and finish lines, a dedicated spotter system and a half way split point.
Guess what. We delivered.

The following year, Cameron was ready to raise the stakes. "OK guys, good job. But … can you give me 10k split times in the marathon with results fed live back to the timing base?" We thought that one was quite a challenge and had certainly never been attempted before in Australasia. But Cam was just getting started.

All of this was a precursor to 2008, the 30th anniversary of the race. This time, Cameron said, "I want 5k splits throughout the marathon with all split times broadcast live in real-time on our Internet webcast." Even marquee events like the London and New York marathons - with multi-hundred thousand dollar timing budgets - were only experimenting with this level of functionality.

Once again, Timing Sports delivered. Our team of four dedicated timers and another dozen helpers deployed no less than 14 timing points on race day; Start, Start Backup, 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, 21k, 25k, 30k, 35k, 40k, Spotter, Finish and Finish Backup! Local timing points at the event precinct were hard-wired into our timing centre whilst the split points out in the field were connected to the Internet via the Telstra cellular network.

It was a tremendously challenging but supremely satisfying experience to hear on the race radio as race leaders passed each split point … and then instantly look up their split times and positions, using the same web pages as thousands of race fans. The system wasn't just for the elite athletes either with many people tuning in at each 5k split point to monitor the progress of friends and family.

Thanks to Cameron's vision, Timing Sports elevated the standards of race timing to a new level at GCAM '08 and we look forward to matching and exceeding those standards in the future.

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