Marking racers as DNF or DNS

There are three main statuses common to all race formats built into Zone4 Timing:

  • Did Not Start (DNS) indicates that a racer did not start the race
  • Did Not Finish (DNF) indicates that a racer started the race but could not finish or chose not to finish
  • Disqualified (DSQ) indicates that a racer was removed from the results because they violated some race rule

Individual racers can be marked as DNF, DNS, or DSQ. You can also mark groups of racers as DNS or DNF.

Some race formats have other statuses that need to be applied to racers. For example, setting a “LAP” status on racers that were lapped out.  You can set a custom status text by following the instructions here, but if you want the racer moved to the bottom of the results, you will also have to choose one of the DNF/DSQ/DNS statuses for the racer.

On the results list, racers with one of these three statuses are listed without rankings, at the very bottom of the list in the following order:

  • DSQ
  • DNF
  • DNS

DNS racers are ordered by their bib number (lowest to highest).

DSQ and DNF racers are ordered by the time they were marked as DSQ or DNF. If multiple racers are marked DSQ or DNF at the same time, racers are ordered by bib number (lowest to highest).

Marking an individual racer as DNS, DNF, or DSQ

To find and edit an individual racer go to the Racer page and enter either their name or bib number in the search bar. Click on their name.

In this new Edit Racer window, go to the Timing tab and find the Set to DNS/DNF/DSQ drop down menu:

In order to be marked as DNS, DNF, or DSQ the racer must actually be part of the race. If the racer is not part of any course group or start group, the tools to mark a status will not be displayed.

When you set the status to DNF or DSQ, a time field will appear to enter the time they were marked as DNF or DSQ. This time is used to order the DNF and DSQ racers in the results. If you don’t care about the order of DNF and DSQ racers, you can ignore the time field.

Marking all racers in a course group as DNF

At some point, you will reach the end of the race and want to simply mark everybody as DNF if they haven’t reached the finish line yet. If you are using intermediate timing points and have a sweep clearing the course, you may also want to mark everybody who hasn’t reached an intermediate point as DNF. 

To do this, navigate to the Timing page for your race and select the desired timing point from the Times drop down menu. This brings up a list of the times each racer in a course group crossed that timing point.

In this new window click on the Tools menu and click the option titled Mark racers with no time here DNF. This will bring up a confirmation popup that tells you how many racers will be affected before changing any statuses.

Marking all racers in a course group DNS if they don’t have a start time

If you are using a chip start at your race, or recording start times in an interval start race, you will have an individual start time for each racer who started.  To mark all the racers who do not have an individual start time as DNS, navigate to the Timing page for your race and select Start from the Times drop down menu. This brings up a list of start times for each racer in a course group:


In this new window click on the Tools menu and click the option titled Mark Racers with no Start Time DNS.  This will display a confirmation popup indicating how many racers will be affected before changing any statuses.

Marking all racers in a course group as DNS if they don’t have a finish time

At larger running races without a chip start, it’s common to have a lot of DNS racers, but you don’t necessarily know who they are until after the race.  Instead of trying to track who started, it can be simpler to track which racers dropped out, mark those people as DNF individually, and then mark everybody else who hasn’t finished as DNS. 

To do this, navigate to the Timing page for your race and select Finish from the Times drop down menu. This brings up a list of finish times for each racer in a course group:

In this new window click on the Tools menu, find the Mark racers with no time here DNS option. This will display a confirmation popup indicating how many racers will be affected before changing any statuses. Racers who already have a DNF or DSQ status will not be affected.

Updated on 2019-06-28

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