24 Hours Roller Montreal

On September 6-7, Montreal's Formula-1 racetrack was the venue for 24 Hours Roller Montreal, a relay race for teams of inline skaters that runs for 24 hours straight. This was the fifth edition, and for the 4th year running I was there as a timekeeper. Modeled after a similar race in Le Mans that maxes out at 5000 skaters (in turn modeled after the legendary auto race), the Montreal event is a ton of fun on a more human scale. At 101 teams totalling 750 participants, this year's race was perfect.

We used AMB's ChipX system with Orbits 4 and Mylaps Monitor. Every team had two transponders, one for the skater on the course, the other for the skater who would take the relay. The timing team had 4 computers, 2 printers and 2 extra monitors, a quantity of equipment that was partly about backups but mostly about giving a heap of service.

There are many challenges in an event like this, but the first is sheer endurance. 24 hours of timing, preceded and followed by hours of preparation and cleanup. This year I shared the load with fellow-operator Gaétan Rochette, making this edition the easiest yet. Each of us could trust the other to run the show and do things right, whether side-by-side or in relays to catch a little sleep.

The second challenge was the weird things competitors do. In Montreal we can be more skater-friendly than at Le Mans, where strict rules are a necessity. Did a skater forget to put on a chip? No problem. Did an entire team spend the first few hours wearing the chips on their wrists? No problem, ChipX caught most of their crossings, and the rest were obvious from the data. Usually we insert crossings in the right chronological location, but when necessary we use Corrections and Penalties to massage the data quickly, with an explanatory comment. The key is to leave a rich data record, just in case something has to be figured out afterwards.

As often as we added crossings, we deleted others! Sometimes a skater waiting in the relay zone would wander up the track, close enough to the line to trigger a false crossing. With the minimum time set to 6 minutes for this 4.32 km course, Orbits caught most of the false crossings... and we caught the rest. We're skaters too, so when Orbits flags a team's fastest lap, we look closer. Suspiciously fast? Display all their crossings, check the transponder numbers, and what really happened is instantly clear.

The biggest challenge however was the one we set ourselves, to be lavish with service. The two extra screens were for Mylaps Monitor. Rolling in from doing their lap, skaters could see the latest data on a large screen set up high in a tent. They loved that screen! Rolling a little further, right into the paddock where we had our equipment, they could use one of the computers to dig deeper, ask one of us for help or information, or even request a printout of their team's current results. Orbits 4 makes this kind of service a whole lot easier than it used to be. No longer do you have to go bug-eyed staring at the screen to locate a competitor. Just type in part of a name or click on a header to resort the list, and there it is!

By the way, we also gave Mylaps Monitor a challenge. The original version couldn't handle the number of competitors we were running, but AMB came through with a last-minute update that worked pretty well. There were a few little glitches in some of the data it displayed, so the program still needs refining.

So how many laps can inline skaters turn out in 24 hours? The winning team, the "Rapid Lap Dogs II" from Ottawa, did 173 laps for 747.36 km. Solo skater Philippe Coussy did 133 laps for 574.56 km, a huge accomplishment. For complete results, click here.

Article written by Rod Willmot