Auckland Not a Bridge Too Far For IPICO

Auckland's iconic Harbour Bridge forms the centrepiece of the adidas Auckland Marathon and the event has shown meteoric growth over recent years. Entries sell out weeks and even months in advance as runners and walkers in the half and full marathon clamour for the opportunity to cross the famous span between the North Shore and Auckland City. Auckland's harbour bridge is closed to pedestrian traffic year round and the participants in the event have a once-a-year chance to cross the bridge on foot, enjoying spectacular views of the City and inner Waitemata Harbour on the way.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009 and remains the single most important transport link in the country. For this reason, even though almost 9,000 athletes cross the bridge on the first Sunday after Labour Day each year, the road must remain open to traffic at all times.

Testing on Auckland's Harbour Bridge, some 50m above the Waitemata Harbour

Careful management is required to ensure safety for all bridge users and The Long Run Ltd, organisers of the adidas Auckland Marathon, requested accurate competitor data from the crown of the bridge span in 2008. Unfortunately, the dense steel plate which forms the basis for the road surface prevented our legacy ChampionChip analogue equipment from detecting transponders. For 2009, Timing Sports will utilise next generation IPICO dual frequency shoetags and Elite readers for race timing.

The new systems were given their sternest test in late-April when routine welding work on the outer spans of the bridge allowed Timing Sports' staff to deploy and test the IPICO timing system on the mid-point of the bridge. The road surface there varies from 50-100 mm of asphalt laid atop a plate steel base. The systems passed the test with flying colours.

"We're confident now we can supply accurate data from the top of the bridge," commented Timing Sports' Rob Docherty. "The environment up there is certainly hostile for magnetic based RFID systems and we noticed a slight drop in tag detection height from above-knee to mid-calf, but comfortably enough to catch tags. The Elite system performed excellently, tuning itself accurately to the challenging circumstances and giving 100% detection in our runner tests."

About Timing Sports
Timing Sports provide electronic race timing services to almost all of Australasia's major running events including the Sun-Herald City2Surf fun run in Sydney (the World's largest electronically timed running event with over 70,000 participants), the Gold Coast Marathon (22,000 athletes and the largest full marathon field in Australasia), Bridge to Brisbane (40,000 - largest event in Queensland), Perth City to Surf (40,000 - largest event in Western Australia), Run For the Kids in Melbourne (30,000 - largest event in Victoria) and the Auckland Marathon (13,000 - largest event in New Zealand). For more information, visit www.timingsports.com.

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