Timing Sprint Heats

Timing sprint heats requires a good knowledge of sprint race logistics and timing gear. Also on sprint days communication with various volunteers is extremely important. This is a summary of using Zone4 Timing software for sprint heat timing. Other important documentation is.

Timing Sprint heats requires using a different race file then the qualifier. You do not need to wait for the qualifier to be done in order to begin setting up your sprint heats.

Timing 

Once heats have been created and courses have been set up, navigate to the Timing page of Zone4 and select  Show Heats button as is shown below.

The heats window will be where you will spend most of your time while heats are progressing. Here you can assign the finish order of heats if the heats are not being timed. You can also manually assign finish times if the method you’re using doesn’t assign them automatically.

The heat recorded start time field in the top right of each block will fill in automatically as times are recorded on snow. If you need to adjust the start time of any heat, you can type a new time into this field.

Assigning Finish Order for Untimed Heats 

Make sure to follow the steps from this help document to create your Heats race file correctly: https://help.zone4.ca/wp-admin/post.php?post=7144&action=edit

Important note for the advancement of the Untimed heats to work smoothly:

Under the course tab, even if you are not using any timing equipment for the untimed heats, you need to assign a start device under your timing devices. In the example below, I assigned an activator at the start but any type of device would work:

Timing Tab

In the Heats window for an un-timed heats race, you’ll see a column labeled “#” instead of a finish time column.  To rank the racers in each heat, enter their bib numbers in the correct finish order in this column, as seen in the example below.

In the first heat, racers finished in the order 12-6-13-1-7

Updated on 2023-02-08

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