Doing It For The Kids

Timing Sports rolled out their state of the art IPICO dual frequency timing systems in spectacular fashion on April 5th, timing a huge field of runners and walkers in Victoria's largest participatory sport event,  Run For The Kids.  Neither economic slowdown nor the worst bush fires in their history could put sports-mad Victorians off from supporting their favourite charity event with their feet. Only four years young, the 2009 edition of Run For the Kids was a 30,000 person sellout.

They're off! 20,000 athletes in the 14.1km event cross our blue IPICO timing mats

The event started on the banks of the Yarra river with participants in the 5.7km event off first at 8:45am. A figure of eight along the river bank and around the Botanic Gardens brought them in to finish at the southern end of Linlithgow Ave. At 9am, athletes in the 14.1km long course event set off on their journey which included the trademark run through the Domain Tunnel, several kilometres along the closed inner-city motorway before passing landmarks such as Bolte Bridge, Flinders St Station and St Kilda Road. Long course athletes finished their run at the northern end of Linlithgow Ave some 250 metres away from the short course finish.

The split finish lines are a unique and challenging feature of this race, requiring Timing Sports to set up two separate finish line timing points - with fully redundant backups - including "spotter" systems for race commentators. At the 14km finish line, race commentators merged with the crowds of athletes coming across the line whilst calling out finisher's names displayed on Timing Sports' iPhone spotter system.

By 9:30am, all 30,000 starters had cleared the 7.5m start line, which was kept deliberately narrow to prevent a bottleneck on the hairpin turn at the entrance to the Domain Tunnel. By 10:45am, the 5.7km finish was in the books and the last finisher in the 14.1km event wandered over the 9 metre wide finish line at 12:30pm. Less than an hour later, full results for every athlete - including team's results for both distances - had been formatted and emailed to Herald & Weekly Times staff waiting to put together the special lift-out edition of the newspaper.

"The operation was as smooth as silk," commented Alan Armsden, Herald & Weekly Times Managing Editor - Partnerships, Major Events. "Files arrived earlier than expected, were accurate from the get-go and made Sunday a pleasurable day at work, achieving exactly what we set out to do without any negative influences."

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