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RaceTec and BulkSMS SMS keeps athletes updated in real-time

Just over 20 years ago, Graeme Vincent wanted to create something new and exciting for the world of endurance racing. He wanted to create a way to track and score athletes using feature-rich software, and he wanted SMS to be part of the solution.

With the goal in mind, Graeme set out to develop RaceTec, an advanced race scoring and results platform. RaceTec now has clients on every continent and in most countries across the world and is used by some big-name events like IRONMAN, The Comrades Marathon, ITU World Championships, The Cape Epic and many more prestigious events.

Where does SMS fit in?

When Graeme developed RaceTec in 2002, he needed a way to notify participants, organisers and spectators of any relevant race day information. And more importantly, he needed to be able to integrate the solution with his software and provide real-time updates to the athletes. This is where SMS comes in. Using our FTP solution, Graeme integrated SMS with RaceTec, and now sends hundreds of thousands messages a year through BulkSMS, most of which are real-time SMSes triggered by the participants’ timing chips whenever they cross a timing point.

But it doesn’t end there. SMSes are also used to:

  • Share final time and rankings with race participants,
  • Indicate where they can find their results on the RaceTec website.
  • Inform supporters of a participant’s current location on course (for example ‘David has just run past the 15km mark at 7:50am in a time of 1:23:45’)
  • Notify participants of pre-race information such as where to register, what their race number is, etc.
  • Announce emergency procedures, such as a cancelled race due to a storm or shark sighting.

When asked why BulkSMS was chosen all those years ago, Graeme said that he needed three things to start out with. Firstly, he needed a solution that could easily integrate with RaceTec. Secondly, he needed to upload files with tens of thousands of messages, all of them different. And lastly, he needed it to be reliable.

BulkSMS ticked all of these boxes, and still does 20 years on!

If you’d like to find out more about SMS, take a look at some more of our customer stories, or click here to email sales.