In a biathlon “Team Relay” format race, racers race in teams of 4 people and each team member does 3 laps and shoots 2 times. Skiers ski penalty loops for missed shots. It is a mass start race with one team member out on course at a time. To create a biathlon team relay race, select the appropriate template when creating a new biathlon race:
Creating Teams and Ordering Team Members
After selecting a format you will be prompted to import racers. Racers can be imported from a csv (excel) file, from a registration form, or copied from a previous race in Zone4. The csv file, registration form, or race will need to have a ‘Team Name’ field (or similar). This field will be used to group racers into teams. Racers with the same value in the ‘Team Name’ field will be grouped together into a single team. Values are case sensitive and must match exactly.
After creating your race, the relay team settings can be found on the race ‘Settings’ page. Select the field that contains your team names as the ‘Team Field’.
NOTE: Zone4 does not check for duplicate team names, so you will want to look through the source of your racer data (registration, csv or race file) and ensure that each team has a unique name.
If you are assigning racer numbers in Zone4 Timing, you might also want to choose an ordering for your team members. If you know ahead of time which order the team members will be racing in, you can use a separate ‘Bib Order’ field, or similar, to assign bib numbers to team members in the order in which they will be racing. The racer with the lowest ‘Bib Order’ value will get assigned as the lowest racer number on his/her team.
Ordering team members is optional. If you do not select a field to order team members by, they will be assigned bib numbers randomly.
Setting up Courses
Courses are set up the same as in non-relay biathlon race formats (more information can be found here https://help.zone4.ca/kb/timing-a-biathlon-race/#setting-up-courses).
NOTE: As with all biathlon penalty loop races, it is important to set up good min splits for your lap and penalty loop (e.g. a good min split is your fastest possible lap time – 20%). Setting good min split times ensures that penalty loops are automatically assigned to the proper lap.
If you created your race using the ‘Biathlon Team Relay’ template, it will automatically set your race up such that each team has 4 team members, each team member does 3 laps, and each team member shoots 2 times, prone then standing. If you would like to change any one of these variables, you can do so in the course groups table or individual course setup screen.
In the individual course setup screen, you can change the number of racers on a team, the number of laps each team member skis, and the shooting configuration.
