PRODUCT
Sierra Wireless AirCard® 555
CHALLENGE
Taking place for the past 16 years every April in Whistler, BC, the Sierra Wireless Whistler Cup is North America's premier international ski race for boys and girls ages 11 to 14. Young athletes from around the world including Andorra, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, and the United States have participated in this juvenile ski race that features potential future Olympians.
A world class event, it's one of only eight races of its kind taking place around the globe, yet finding out race results could take hours, sometimes even days after the last skier crossed the finish line. A children's race run entirely by volunteers, the Whistler Cup didn't have the resources or advanced technology for live instantaneous timing that professional races did. When a skier finished their race, a volunteer would write their results on a large white board at the timing shack. Skiers could check their times on the board, but it was always congested with other skiers, parents and officials. Plus, it took extra time for volunteers to organize the skiers' placement in a race. Cell phones and radios were also used to communicate results to the club office, but this method couldn't be relied upon due to spotty coverage on the mountain and verbal miscommunications caused by poor reception. The official method had a volunteer transport the timing tape to the Whistler Mountain Ski Club's office in Creekside, where at the end of the day, a technical delegate would confirm the results and then give the go-ahead to post them to the website as official results. Therefore race results weren't widely known until the evening after the races, and sometimes even days after if it took longer to determine official results. Fans, friends, and families had to wait to find out standings in the event.
SOLUTION
Keven Dubinsky of the BC Alpine Ski Association designed a web-based leader board system to deliver live timing results to the Whistler Cup website. Sitting in the timing shack at the end of the ski run with a notebook computer, his proprietary software program, and an AirCard 555 wide area PC Card, Keven entered the timing results after each skier crossed the finish line. The web program would calculate their placement and the AirCard connected to a cellular network would ensure the results were instantaneously delivered to the web so fans and families around the world could view immediate unofficial results. "For the Whistler Cup team, it was really an economical and efficient way to deliver real time information, that until now, only Olympic type events had been able to provide," said Kevin.
"Family and friends all over the world could now be a part of the action by easily accessing racer results," said Bruce Goldsmid, General Manager of BC Alpine Ski Association. "We had 15,000 unique visitors to the Cup's website over the three days, and I had numerous unsolicited emails from all over the world thanking us for this service." With the AirCard wirelessly powering the live timing, families and fans in other parts of the world with Internet access could often find out the results of a race even before the skiers themselves. "One skier called her mother in Austria on her cell phone right after the race to find out her time as her mother was watching the race on the Internet," said Keven.
John Rea, chairman of Whistler Cup sees the long-term benefits of live timing. "Live timing with the Sierra Wireless AirCard not only helps streamline our internal team communication during the race but is an opportunity for improvement for the next athlete at the gate," said John. "If a coach knows the time of a previous racer it provides him or her and the racers with accurate information prior to starting their race, so they have a goal in mind to beat."
The AirCard 555 proved to be a reliable wireless tool for the Whistler Cup event. The complete solution has helped take the Whistler Cup event to a new world-class level, by offering global viewers current race information on a timely basis.