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The 2009 Los Angeles Marathon will be held on May 25, 2009. Officials said RFID solutions will be deployed to track runners’ running time. More than 20,000 runners will take part in this year’s marathon, and authorities plan to attach RFID-enabled timing tags to runners’ shoes.
The timing tracking solution was provided by ChronoTrack Systems, whose “D” timing labels were attached to the competitors’ shoes by adhesively bonding the strips to a highly durable designed label changer made of Provided by the MPI labeling system. The strips are bent into a “D” shape that wraps around the laces of the shoe, ensuring that each competitor places the label uniformly for consistent timing – other timing tracking solutions have more flexibility and can be adhered to the competition other positions of the user, but may result in uneven timing results.
Each “D” timing tag carries a UPM Raflatac UHF Gen 2 DogBone RFID tag and Impinj Monza 3 tag chip. The tracking solution consists of a series of five ChronoTrack-supplied polyurethane ramps placed at key timing points along the race route. The ramps use UHF antennas to transmit race data to Impinj’s track readers and ChronoTrack controllers, converting the collected data into a specific format for use in the scoring software package.
For the 2008 Los Angeles Marathon, the ChronoTrack solution provided time data with an accuracy of 99.84%. Compared to previous high-cost tracking solutions, this RFID solution is less expensive and more accurate.
Los Angeles Marathon Race Chief Executive Terry Collier said, “Our third-party timing verifier is the most accurate way to keep time. It’s functionally comparable to Olympic timing technology. It’s easier to start and finish a race, and it can be done in a few minutes. It can be done in hours instead of days. It also requires fewer volunteers and equipment. Deploying this RFID tagging system has realized a cost reduction of $15,000 to $20,000.”
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