Making sure the right time is recorded...

[Pat Chewning]

I suggest that this topic be discussed under "Timing Systems"

http://www.slalomskateboarder.com/phpBB ... m.php?f=58

[Kevin Dunne]

Timing is probably the most important aspect of racing and it seems prehistoric to relay on somebody to manually enter a racer's time into a spreadsheat. Is there a way to avoid this step and have the timer (not the person in charge of timing...the actual piece of equipment) transfer times directly to the computer? At almost every race that I attended this season I witnessed critical errors on the part of the person recording times into the computer. I saw wrong times recorded (ex: 27.926 instead of 27.296), racer's times switched (racer A had racer B's time), racer's courses switched (Red course gets time of White course...again resulting in racer A getting racer B's time), etc...
The way it is now, it just seems that it all comes down to human error and that is something that needs to be removed from the process of recording times. I don't know what it would take, or if it is even possible, but it is something we need to look at...