IPICO Sports successfully times
the 34th annual Steamboat Classic

PEORIA, IL—With just two days of training, a group of Illinois Valley Striders (IVS) volunteers successfully timed the 34th annual Steamboat Classic, a world-class sporting event that attracts elite runners as well as thousands of local athletes.

Using tags, mats and readers provided by IPICO Sports, the Peoria running club provided real-time results for the nearly 3,000 runners who participated in the June 2007 4-mile and 15km races that wind through the city of Peoria, Ill.

"It was so easy," said Race Director Philip Lockwood. "We trained on Thursday and Friday, and deployed the equipment on Saturday morning before the race. People who were untrained on Thursday afternoon went out and installed the mats and readers on their own."



Citizen participants wore IPICO Sports Sportag™ on one shoe; elite runners wore a tag on each shoe. As runners crossed the mat antennas set up throughout the course, readers captured them multiple times to ensure 100 percent accuracy. Times were captured at the 2-mile, 5km and finish for the 4-mile event, and at 5km, 10km and finish for the longer race.

Using a state-of-the-art filtering system, multiple tag reads were reduced to "first seen" and "last seen"—choosing only the first time and last time a tag crossed the mat before transmitting results live to a Web site.

IVS partnered with an online service provider to have results streaming live to the Internet. Once the race was completed, IVS downloaded the results immediately to its own Web site.

"The system not only captured 100 percent of the runners at each of the split points, but then provided the results real time," said IPICO Sports CEO Mark Herbst. "This added great value to participants and anyone who wanted to track their results."

In addition to being lightweight and easy to use, the IPICO Sports mats allowed for a start line of 28 meters—about double the width allowed by other technologies.

IPICO Sports provides basic training to organizations using its equipment, as well as on-site consulting services specifically for major events like the Steamboat Classic. "The basic intent of IPICO Sports is to provide tools and technology that are easy to use. And that’s what we did for the Steamboat Classic," said Herbst.

"The Steamboat Classic has always been known as a very well organized event whose participants literally come from around the world for one weekend in June to run and socialize," Lockwood said. "We think adding IPICO Sports technology to the event made it an even better experience for those participants."

"We didn’t have to hire someone to run our event," he said. "We did it ourselves in a first-class way."