RaceSplitter — Race Timer 4+

Not worth it

I’ve been organizing races for over a decade, back when timing was done using a handheld Seiko timer with paper roller print out. Then Stevens Creek came out with PocketTimer for the Palm Pilot and that was awesome. Still quirky but better than the old way, especially after they ported over to iPhone. Jump ahead and now the RaceSplitter is here with web based access. On the outset, it is very promising - especially the simplified input of racers and categories using a template with limited fields and the ability to import a CSV file. But using it can be frustrating, especially when it comes to making changes to timing entries on the fly (particularly if a wave start is used). Once you enable Auto-Split you are prohibited from making changes on the fly. Despite this, I continued to use it because I liked how the results were so easy to upload to RaceSplitter’s servers. But I cannot use it anymore as I narrowly avoided a catastrophe this past weekend at an event. Two days before the race I was trying to enter in racers directly into the app. I had no internet access so this was the only method I could use. The program kept crashing and wouldn’t let me add racers. Luckily, I still had Pockettimer Pro on my iPad and was able to duplicate the roster and then add the new racers very easily. Disappointed with RaceSplitter.

Developer Response ,

App crashes are almost always related to running either an outdated version of RaceSplitter or (more often) the iOS. As you can see from the website, almost 2 million people have been timed with RaceSplitter, and our Results sections—containing only those results people have made public—are voluminous every month. In many sports, like Nordic skiing, it's the de-facto product, recommended by the various sports associations.

In cases where an app crashes, which is almost certainly an isolated situation, it would be preferable that customers contact our support team, rather than just posting a negative review on an app, which can be catastrophic to the business. Thanks.

Overall winners?

I used this last year for a 5K. I can’t figure out how to do results where the top 3 men and women are removed from the age groups. Emailed them a week before and got no response. This is pretty important for most races.

solid

this app works great for time trials and other events where everyone is registered before the first starting gun. but is not helpful for situations like a wave start road race or cross country race where people are still registering for later heats after the first heat has left.

our grassroots short track series is a casual tuesday night series where people come from work and register on site at the last minute.

if it were possible to run multiple races at once and enter laps and finish punches for ALL of them from the same screen, i'd love this app. as it is, its an imcomplete solution, with some holes.