Sherwin & Liggett, normally the best in the biz, have been strangely off their game during the TT stages. It has been tough to figure out what's going on by listening to them.

Maybe it's just bad editing in condensing the whole day down to one hour?

Having the GAZ displays mounted on top of the finish gantry has been a nice bonus to those of us watching at home, as the ESPN cameramen have been framing the displays nicely as the rider crosses the line. Makes up for the poor commentating.

Bib - Rank - Time!

Hi James,

I've worked with Phil & Paul at numerous events. I give them, at their commentary position, a constantly updating PowerPoint display of rankings and finish times. It uses the same data feed that I provide for the TV caption generator , fed by my results program, which is getting the times from a TDC8000.

Is there anywhere I can find PDFs of the official printed results? The results on the official site seem to be incomplete.

Send me an email and I will put you on the distribution list.

Seamus:

Fred does something similar (TTWare Commentator screen), but many steps beyond. The TTWare commentator screen is quite a bit more robust than the info available from the TDC, and it all works in real time (running seconds for all racers updated 10 times per second).

ESPN didn't pay for commentator screens, scoring interfaces, or live TV graphics, so Fred didn't provide them. I believe, in cases where the cabling was easy, Fred provided a commentator screen to Liggett & Sherwin out of the goodness of his heart.

I just take times (in real time) from the TDC and then do the rankings in my own software, adding names etc. PC speeds are so high these days, there's no noticeable delay.

One of my display options is 'thin client', where all that's required on the commentator PC or PDA is a web browser.

The running clocks idea is cool. I've given it some thought myself and I think the only way I'd do it would be with a 'fat-client' which is synchronised from the TDC's clock but driven from the local PC & its clock, thereby minimisimg net traffic. That raises the issue of having to install a fully-configured PC.

As always, it's hard to justify the effort if it's not being paid for & there's only so much one person can support on the day. So, maybe only realistic for big-budget events.

My next event has a field of 200 'b' and 'c' category riders, based at a seaside town some 100km from Dublin.

This is probably way ahead of where I've taken Hilda so far on her learning curve, but when there'd be some effort done to get the live passings from whatever system posted into StageRace, they could put another screen up, having there StageRace in a sort of commentator mode also, updating with whatever intermediate or 'virtual' classification you'd wish for But let's not get ahead... I was already happy to see some StageRace on the laptops in the background of Fred's pictures

I've got that covered already using AMB transponders and software I've written. But if you'd like to add an XML stage-results-import to your software, Hilda could just suck the stage results into StageRace after the decoder spits them out....after being verified by the photofinish, of course. The AMB stuff isn't nearly reliable enough to trust for results without thorough verification by photofinish. Not only do the transponders fail frequently, and not only do riders swap bikes frequently (rendering the transponders useless) but the resolution isn't high enough for a close sprint.