FAQs

Our current units weigh 50 grams for a front and 85 grams for the rear unit.

As a comparable product, the Garmin Varia radar bike light system is listed as weighing 100grams.

Yes, for the system to work fairly and effectively, RaceRanger becomes a mandatory requirement to compete in an event, just like race numbers and timing chips.

The rear devices have orange, blue and red LED lights, which point backwards at you from the rider ahead, where you are already looking. Just like a normal bike light, but 3 colours. The lights give 3 different signals. If no-one is within range the lights are off.

SIGNAL 1 - When you reach a threshold distance eg 17m behind the rider in front, the first light signal comes on; a solid orange light. This gives you an indication that you’re in the safe zone.

SIGNAL 2 - When you cross a second threshold eg 14m, the signal changes to a solid blue light. This tells you that you are now getting close to the drafting zone. If you get much closer, you’ll find yourself in the drafting zone.

SIGNAL 3 - If you then continue to progress towards the rider ahead and cross over the 12m threshold (if the event is working off World Triathlon’s common 12m drafting rule), the colour of the light changes to red, and it also goes from a solid to a rapidly flashing light.

PENALTY NOTIFICATION - If a referee gives you a warning or a penalty, your front device will make a beeping noise, and lights on the front device, facing up at you will light up. Additionally, the referee may still choose to show you a blue or red card.

When you approach the next penalty tent along the course, your number will be displayed on a roadside traffic screen, and you will be required to pull into the tent and serve your penalty as is currently done.

Once you’ve racked your bike and headed out on your run, the devices will be carefully removed from your bike by the RaceRanger team, recharged wirelessly, and taken on to the next event. The single use cable zip-ties will be of the eco-friendly biodegradable / recyclable variety.

No. We are 100% here for the age groupers.

RaceRanger is currently only being used on professional fields of athletes due to the lower number of devices required to cover the field, but meanwhile we are hard at work improving and making the system scalable to the thousands to be used by everyone.

UPDATE NOV 2024
We are currently looking for candidate races of around 300 athletes to use the system with age groupers for the first time.

Beyond this we still have some ‘ease of use’ technical adjustments to complete which will make it possible to operate over 3000 athletes in one event.

We are also adding live tracking features, which will add another dimension to its use in age groups.

Distance measurements in the range most relevant to the drafting rules - between 0-30m, are highly accurate. The accuracy of RaceRanger’s distance measurement results in an error of just 10cm or less at 30m apart, with this measurement being made and updated up to 8x per second.

There are two parts to ‘accuracy’ in this case really. There’s the accuracy of the distance measurement, but then also the level of accuracy related to the latency from the moment a distance threshold has been crossed, to the moment the light indication turns on and is visible to the rider.

The RaceRanger team have literally spent years in R&D to make the system’s distance measurements as accurate as possible, and any indication latency from crossing a threshold to the moment the light signal changes as imperceptible as possible.

To be worth the time, effort and investment to bring RaceRanger to the market, it must reach ‘the masses’; the age group fields, not just the professionals. At that stage, RaceRanger will be an additional charge, typically included as part of an athlete’s entry fees.

We do not want to put a specific price figure on the system at this point, as it’s very difficult to obtain accurate quotes for electronic components at the moment due to disruption in the global supply chain.

However, the amount will be reasonable….significantly less than common event entry website processing fees, added as the final step of entering many races today.

Initially no. RaceRanger will be delivered as a complete system by our team at events, to ensure it’s launched successfully and gets good uptake throughout the sport.

We do plan to offer F+R sets for sale as a consumer direct purchase in future. As we all know, you should never try anything new on raceday, so we expect athletes will want to train with the RaceRanger system on their bikes to get used to it. Athletes would of course need to have a friend also running the system on their bike for them to be useful in training.

We’ve been working closely with all the major groups in the sport during our development. They have been open to learning more about RaceRanger as the product has developed and supported our early trial events.

We’d love the support of the global triathlon community, to help us show that drafting is a problem we would all like to see addressed, and are prepared to pay a little extra for.

For a number of reasons, the initial RaceRanger system consists of 2 devices per bike.

The current system is most accurate when there is as clear a line of sight between two devices as possible. In this case the view from one rider’s rear unit, backwards to another’s front.

Defining the moment of pass needs to be done with a high level of accuracy. In combination with other sensor inputs, RaceRanger uses the 2xF, 2xR devices of 2 riders in an overtake scenario to determine with high accuracy, when one rider has passed another.

Having 2 devices allows us to position the rider indication lights (which tell a following rider how close they are), on the seat post / seat tube of the bike, where the following rider is already looking. While the front device receives the incoming penalty notifications from referees.

To prevent an athlete attempting to tamper with the system, having the front device (which measures the distance to the rider ahead), mounted midway up the fork, means that to reach down and try to cover, or remove the unit would be counterproductive and quite dangerous while riding along. It’s recommended that triathlon rules be expanded to detail that attempting to cover / remove the RaceRanger devices during an event is a disqualification offence.

We triathletes are a particular bunch. Practically every rider has a different handlebar / cockpit area set-up. We did not want to place any extra equipment in this area. As every bike is quite different in this area, there would be a number of mounting challenges to achieve a workable solution for all.

Having the light indication of following distance on a rider’s handlebars would distract them from where they should be looking – up at the road ahead. This is why we put the light indication on the rear of the bike ahead, the safest place for them to be looking.

REAR

Rear devices drive the interaction with front devices of following athletes. They determine which front devices are;

• heading in the same direction as themselves,

• behind, not in front of themselves

• close enough to want to get a highly accurate distance measurement between the 2 bikes

The rear device then determines which light signals to show the closest following rider.

If the rider stays within the illegal zone over the allowed time, or enters the zone and then drops back out again, this information is transmitted to the local motorbike referees within 3-10km ahead and behind. The referees are connected with each other via the RaceRanger cloud app, which connects and shares all their officiating activity amongst themselves, the penalty tents, and race HQ.

FRONT

Front devices ‘advertise’ their location to ‘listening’ rear devices.

They then engage in distance measuring activity (ranging) with the rear of a rider ahead as directed by that rear.

Front devices then receive warning / penalty signals from referees as they are applied. To notify the rider that they have a penalty the front devices will make an audible noise, and upward facing indicator lights will flash.

Yes. The LED lights are similar to common modern cycling lights, designed for use in all light conditions to improve rider visibility and safety.

Through our competition trials and work with pro athletes, we have arrived at the present 3 colours and solid / flash patterns. It has been important to ensure that the lights are visible, but do not overly annoy the athletes. As potentially they will be visible for hours on end.

Reducing the reflected glare of sunlight from the device lens has also been something we have had to account for.

One full long-distance race day’s use for even the slowest of competitors. Batteries in all devices are wirelessly recharged en-masse after the event before the next race.

In the Ironman length events we’ve tested at, none of the devices have dropped below 60% remaining charge by the end of the bike. (albeit this was the pro field, so they aren’t out there all day)

With the multiple technologies included in the devices, our engineering team faced the challenge of fitting 4 different RF antenna into the smallest space possible, without them interfering with each other too much. By having a curved edge we have been able to bend a couple of these antenna around the insides of the enclosure, minimizing the overall footprint, while maintaining the required performance level of the system.

Our initial objective is to service the long-distance section of the sport, as this represents the pinnacle of non-drafting racing in our sport currently. Generally courses are more openly spaced with less tight turns or sharp corners for longer races.

Also, because the entry fees in longer distance events are higher generally, the additional cost of the RaceRanger service will make up a smaller % increase to entry fees than it would for shorter events.

That said, the system is being used at top level Para triathlon events including the Pairs 2024 Paralypics, which are contested over the sprint distance, and are non-drafting events.

No. The devices are pre-programmed to only ‘wake-up’ on race day, and once the bike is moving and the rider gets out on the course.

The system is pre-configured to the rules being applied on the day, such as drafting distance, time allowed to pass, penalty time, number of penalty tents etc.

For professionals, many have voiced the opinion that the 12m drafting zone is too short, due to the improvements to aerodynamic bike equipment and understanding of body positions made over the last 25 years.

RaceRanger can be configured to be effective at whatever distance is required, including the 20m distance used at a number of pro events currently.

It is our hope that the introduction of RaceRanger may lead to a further standardization of rules around drafting globally, so that athletes experience the fairest race possible and in a consistent manner wherever they choose to toe the line.

Firstly, every athlete will have the 2x devices on their bikes, so no-one will be competitively disadvantaged.

We have worked hard to make the device enclosures as aerodynamic as possible, within the constraints of the technology required to be fitted inside. We plan to test the drag properties in a wind tunnel setting and provide this information to athletes.

In essence RaceRanger does not require the rules of the sport to fundamentally change.

Referees still give penalties, and they might still show the rider a penalty card.

Penalties are still served on the roadside in tents, removing athletes from the drafting situation.

There will likely need to be minor edits / additions to the rules to account for events where the system is in use, such as;

• Making it illegal to intentionally tamper with or affect the system.

• Adding the requirement that adequate space must be left / made available on the rear edge of the seatpost / seat tube area of the bike to accommodate the rear units

• While the system will be simple and intuitive to use, referees will require some adaptions to their training programs to educate them on how to best use RaceRanger to ensure a fairer race for all.

We have been working on RaceRanger with World Triathlon since 2018, and these considerations are being worked through in detail.

We have consulted on this issue with World Triathlon’s Technical Commission, and referee representatives from other event organisations. What would the referees like to see on the tablets in front of them? This Is a genuinely novel concept to ponder!

The outcome is that the referees will be shown the activity of a handful of the worst offending athletes in their vicinity ahead and behind them along the course. They will be ranked in order of their ‘recent illegal time’, which will be an addition of all reported time over the allowed passing time, within a rolling period of for example the last 15minutes.

For these athletes identified, their total ‘Illegal Time’ so far in the race will be reported, as well as their ‘yo-yo count’ the number of times an athlete has entered a draft zone, but then dropped backwards out of it.

Their position in relation to the motorbike, ahead and behind will be shown as a graphic, so the referee can direct their driver to proceed forwards or drop backwards to take a closer look, or communicate directly with the athlete(s).

If the referee wants to give a penalty, they apply it directly through the RaceRanger app.

Referees are not shown athlete names on the app, only race numbers.

We believe strongly that the founding ideals of the sport, of a pure and individual effort are held close to heart by the majority of triathletes, and that non-drafting triathlon is not going anywhere in a hurry.

The event market is a free market space, so if there was demand from athletes for such an event, it would surely have become a popular format by now?

Triathletes are not known for our bike handling skills, especially in this Covid age of indoor training. The thought of allowing drafting in a long-distance race would be a health and safety nightmare for any triathlon event organizer.

RaceRanger will modernize and significantly reduce the major paint point in our sport. Non-drafting triathlon will be more enjoyable for all involved, and we shouldn’t need draft legal long distance races.

In fact, could RaceRanger be an avenue for the sport to fairly and credibly add a middle distance non-drafting event to the Olympic Games one day?

This problem has taken usover 6 years of R&D to get to this point. We believe that many have likely looked at it in the past, but perhaps the investment to get to the point we have reached with RaceRanger outweighed the potential benefits.

Technology is always advancing, and generally getting smaller, faster, cheaper. Perhaps the right combinations of technologies have only just become available?

Maybe we are plain crazy and overly passionate about our sport to have pursued the project to this point? We don’t know...it’s possible! What we do know, is that technology will fix this problem, and we believe we now have the right solution.

Tough biscuits my friend. Triathlon is an individual sport. You can still intentionally draft if you want, but unfortunately for you, the referees will be able to see what you are doing, even when they aren’t riding along with you.

RaceRanger will still provide the athletes with the light indications, so they have clarity over whether they are in the draft zone or not.

Secondly, The information shown to the referees on their tablets, still prioritises the worst offending athletes. Even in the busiest of races some athletes make more of an effort to avoid drafting than others, so they will put themselves lower down the priority ranking that is shown to the referees.

As they do today, the referees still make the judgement calls.

Ultimately, RaceRanger is not a silver bullet to the issue of overcrowded race courses. The responsibility lies with event managers to address this issue, as it does today.

Drafting is the number 1 pain point in our sport from the competitor experience perspective. It is certain that technology will solve this problem. RaceRanger now exists. It cannot be un-invented. Through an adjustment period while RaceRanger is trialled and gradually scaled up in numbers, we are confident that over time, events can adapt their start wave procedures and event scheduling to deliver their athletes a far more enjoyable experience on race day.

The current definition of the drafting zone typically describes a rectangular box from the front wheel of the leading rider, out to each side, and backwards.

RaceRanger devices measure the following distance in an arc from the rear device backwards, so the back end of the current rectangle becomes rounded to follow that arc.

After a rider has crossed this arc, we really only want to know a couple of things. Did they continue to progress forward and complete a pass within the allowed time, or not? Or did they drop back again? (yo-yo) which is also technically against the rules.

So the effective RaceRanger drafting zone looks like this;