TQ Magazine - RaceRanger gets global green light

After a four-race Australasian trial this summer, RaceRanger has been approved for next month's World Triathlon Multisport Championship in Ibiza. Read our TQ.kiwi launch edition feature on the rise and rise of the draft detection system, brought to life by Kiwi co-founders Dylan McNiece and James Elvery.

It’s been a blight on long-distance triathlon since, well, the start of long-distance triathlon. Thankfully, a Kiwi start-up has galloped over the horizon with a clever tech solution to save the day, the very integrity of our sport.

RaceRanger’s world premiere at January’s TaurangaHalf was widely hailed. The drafting detection system got its second outing and none other than Sebastian Kienle’s weighty seal of approval at Challenge Wanaka on Feb.18. The former world Champ tested it again at Ironman NZ on March 4 and thereafter, as planned, RaceRanger is slowly being rolled out around the globe. The cheaters, those blatant or blissfully unaware, are officially on notice.

How does it work?

Small electronic units measure drafting distances between bikes. Each athlete has two devices, one mounted on a front fork, the other on the seatpost. The rear device features three coloured LED lights which change colour depending on how close the following rider is getting. The system can be set to pre-determined drafting distances and will eventually send data to technical officials remotely via a tablet app. That’s the kicker – soon any human ambiguity will be taken out of rulings.

The Tech

The technology encased within each unit is complex and has taken more than six years to develop. It combines GPS, Bluetooth, Ultrawide-band, NFC and wireless charging, as well as an accelerometer and thermometer. RaceRanger is the brainchild of former Kiwi elite triathletes Dylan McNiece and James Elvery who now operate under Precision Triathlon Systems (they’re onto a winner if any shrewd investors are reading). The system has been built predominantly in Christchurch with the assistance of the University of Canterbury’s Wireless Research department, with additional input from World Triathlon.

Tauranga Feedback

Two thirds of the 20 athletes who trialled the system at the Tauranga Half reported RaceRanger working perfectly. The Technical Officials on motorbikes also liked what they saw. Inevitably, there were a few tech glitches with a couple of riders reporting lights turning off for minutes at a time before correcting themselves and resuming normal operations. Groups of riders travelling in opposition directions also reported the systems interfering with each other’s function. “The engineering team are now working through these issues and we hope to have them ironed out before Challenge Wanaka,” said Elvery. The testimonies in the slick UpStreamFilms video above suggests it was mission accomplished down South.

Global/Age group rollout?

Precision Triathlon Systems have 40 sets of units, with the parts poised to produce another 80 sets. “With 120 sets we’ll be able to serve pretty much any pro race around the world through the rest of 2023 which is our goal for this year,” Elvery said. “Eventually we’d like to see it on the age groupers as well but this is likely a 2024 addition. Refining the system and adding live tracking functionality are our current focus.”

What they said…

Sam Osborne - 4th place at the Tauranga Half and coming off penalties in his first two non-drafting races

“It’s really hard to judge distance and it just takes out the ambiguity. It’s just so definitive. You see the lights change and you can gauge your next move. We need it at every race. Most people don’t intend to draft, they just struggle to gauge it.”

Braden Currie - Men’s Champion

“I was a bit sceptical, wondering how it might work with passing manoeuvres and age groupers coming through but my device all day seemed seamless, it was fantastic. Just really good awareness of where you were at, it’s pretty basic to see if you move into that draft zone, it goes blue instantly, so good clarity. I think it’s a have-to the way the sport’s going, the PTO in particular. It’ll just make the sport and the race more fair.”

Rebecca Clarke -Women’s Champion

“I stayed between the orange and red lights, and it mentally took the guesswork out of ‘am I at the appropriate distance’? When Hannah [Berry] was leading, Amelia [Watkinson] was second and I was third, I could see that I was the right distance, but I could also see that ahead of me Amelia was also following Hannah at the right distance. Which showed that we were all doing a fair race.”