by Kevin Miller

I was the Chair of the Technical -- Timing & Results Committee, and Committee members were Sandy Klassen, Michelle Barnet, Cherrie Fournier, and Anita Miller.  I e-mailed Michelle, Cherrie and Sandy three times during the year (November 12th, May 2nd, July 31st) to keep them informed of happenings.

We used Race Wizard Version 4.4B during the season.  It contained improvements to address all of the problems we had in 2000 (in particular the "Riding Mountain problem"), and new functionality that we had requested during 2000 (11 items!).  I updated the Triathlon Race Results user guide to reflect this.

Anita delivered a two-hour training session to Jaclyn and Michelle in early July.

I declined upgrades to versions 4.5, 4.6, and 4.6B as they were released during the season because I did not want a software upgrade to potentially cause problems or procedural changes. 

We continued using the procedures that we'd developed the previous three years, but of course things change and evolve every year. 

For the most part, things went according to plan at all races this year.  Like last year, a few weeks prior to each race, I discussed a plan with the Race Director by e-mail.   A major success was my plan to ensure that Anita would not be the volunteer results person (a stressful job) at races other than the Tuesday Night Series and the Triple Threat Triathlon.  A few problems were encountered at three races:

• The results at St Malo delayed the Awards Ceremony a bit.  I also had to spend a couple hours troubleshooting the results file before I could do the five minute job of generating and annotating the website page.  A few days after the race, two participants contacted us to say they had not DNFed as the results stated --- this took me another couple hours to investigate, correct, and communicate.  A record 214 racers at St Malo definitely stressed the registration/timing/results crew.
• At Pinawa a few procedures were missed, so there were some miscategorizations, spelling mistakes and incorrect club names, but Anita volunteered her time at the race to help fix some of the problems, and I caught the rest before uploading the results to the website.
• The consequence of a miscommunication between the Sandman results person and the Essex Road results person was that the results for Sandman did not get e-mailed to me for website update until five days after the race.

A precedent was set at Riding Mountain where Anita & I were on a paid contract with the Race Director.  I don't want to be seen as profiting from the registration/timing/results procedures that we have developed, but Anita and I have volunteered to do this task for many Race Directors for only an honorarium during the past three seasons.   I raised this point at the September Board Meeting, and a major discussion ensued. The conclusion was that, in 2002, I should tell each Race Director which people have the training and ability to perform the registration/timing/results task, and it would be up to the Race Director to work out a volunteer or paid arrangement with one of those people or someone else. Triathlon Manitoba would continue to supply the notebook computer and TimeTech Sprint 8 watches to the Race Director, and also the mandatory Race Wizard software.