Chip Maker’s Timing is Worse Than Honolulu Marathon’s Timing System
Posted December 13th, 2007 at 8:59 PM by Jimmie R. Markham
Section: News & Results, Marathons
You’ve probably heard by now about the embarrassing failure of the timing system at the Honolulu Marathon this past Sunday, December 9th, 2007. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:
“Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of runners [were left] without proof that they completed the grueling 26.2 miles. Others did not receive accurate finishing times … Intense rain caused an electrical short just before the start of the race. Some transponders on tags attached to competitors’ shoes rebooted correctly; others did not. And some remained dead, leading to problems at every checkpoint.”
SAI Timing and Tracking, the company that implemented the timing system at the race, blamed it on themselves and the weather. SAI owner David Simms stated that, “we didn’t have our equipment weatherproofed as well as we should have.” Even worse, there was plenty of bad timing happening elsewhere.
I found an article on MoreRFID.com that explained what a raging success SAI’s new system was. The article was dated 12/12/07 and it stated that, “Avery Dennison RFID, a business unit of Avery Dennison Corporation and leading provider of RFID technology and services, recently announced that SAI Timing & Tracking Systems of Southfield, MI, has developed an innovative, integrated race timing system using the company’s UHF Gen 2 RFID Inlays in tags produced by MPI Label Systems.”
The article went on to explain that they had “beta tested the [timing system] in real-world race environments with excellent results” and that, “SAI officially launched its Timing & Tracking System at the Philadelphia Marathon (Nov. 18) and the Las Vegas Marathon (Dec. 2) and the Honolulu Marathon (Dec. 9).”
Well, “the official launch” in Honolulu certainly didn’t have “excellent results,” not by any stretch of the imagination. I e-mailed MoreRFID.com and explained that the article was outdated, that the system had failed miserably in Honolulu. An employee at MoreRFID.com promptly e-mailed me back writing that they had removed the article from their site and that they had “informed Avery Dennison about the inaccurate information they provided us.”
It then dawned on me that maybe this wasn’t a case of “inaccurate information.” This was a press release, so it might have been released prior to the Honolulu Marathon and MoreRFID.com might have been just a little late in getting it published.
Curious to know whether or not this was true, I went to the Avery Dennison website and found the press release. This wasn’t outdated information, not at all. The Avery Dennison website revealed that the press release was dated 12/11/07.
Now, wait a minute! Surely Avery Dennison had been informed by now that their chips had failed. Why would they issue a press release a full two days after the fiasco touting their chips as a raging success? Sounds to me like some marketing interns at Avery Dennison failed to weatherproof their training manuals explaining that press releases should be validated before they are issued. The SAI equipment isn’t alone in having bad timing. Avery Dennison’s could be even worse.
Sources: [Honolulu Advertiser][Honolulu Star-Bulletin]
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Tags: avery dennison, honolulu marathon, race timing system, rfid, sai timing and tracking
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The Final Sprint
[…] cybersix had some great ideas on this topic.You can read a snippet of the post here.Sounds to me like some marketing interns at Avery Dennison failed to weatherproof their training manuals explaining that press releases should be validated before they are published. The SAI equipment isn’t alone in having bad timing. … […]
December 14th, 2007 at 10:06 amSAI Timing & Tracking caught a bad break at the Honolulu Marathon. I ran the race, and while my 10K time was off, my other splits were fine. The heavy rains on race day were tough - not surprised timing errors happened. And they were exacerbated by runners who improperly tied and bent their timing strips.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:55 amI don’t think SAI “caught a bad break”. Their system also failed to record a large (but unknown) number of runners at the Philadelphia marathon. Philly was damp, but not a downpour. Unlike Honolulu, the Philly organizers seem to have been unwilling to admit there was a problem.
December 31st, 2007 at 10:34 amAs a timer myself I watch these things closely. SAI pooched the race by using a beta version of their equipment. No ifs, ands, or buts.
The readers were an “engineer’s version” and not weather proofed.
My understanding is that the “chips” worked fine.
Another timing Co. “IPICO” has had catastrophic failures at Boulder and Mexico City, Air Force Marathon, etc.. along with several triathlons.(their chips can’t be read when they are on an ankle strap)their own internal timers say they miss up to 20 percent when the chip is on a strap for a triathlon.
IPICO’S PR machine keeps grinding out these “successes” and lazy bloggers just hotlink or cut and paste these IPICO press releases.
I bring this up because Mr. Simms did what very few people do anymore. He took responcibility for the failure. How refreshing.
I don’t use either of these companies equipment but I sure know who has real Character.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:28 pm[…] Chip Maker??s Timing is Worse Than Honolulu Marathon??s Timing System […]
January 14th, 2008 at 4:32 amThe person above references the catastrphic failures for IPICO Sports. I have run in 2 of the races, Air Force and Nike Mexico City, and was surprised to hear of the failures as I saw no reported issues. In fact I was surprised to see that the End Result was timing Air Force Marathon with IPICO Sports equipment. I had thought they were one of the worlds largest users of Champion Chip. I asked one of their workers and he told me last summer End Result made a full scale switch to IPICO Sports. They also told me a person with ChampionChip USA is also actually working for SAI also. This seems like a conflict of interest!
January 25th, 2008 at 7:53 pmAnyway as a runner all I care about is accurate times and feel there is enough room in the market for multiple competitiors
[…] The electric generators that powered the RFID timing system on the race course flooded and failed in heavy pre-dawn rain. The RFID readers deployed on the race course were not weather-proofed, according to FinalSprint. […]
March 8th, 2008 at 10:27 pm