How cool would it be to watch the positions of skis in a race live on the Internet?  Well, now you can - courtesy of Surfski.info and SportsTrack, we'll have ten tracking units on skis taking part in the New Balance Men's Health Peninsula Marathon that takes place this weekend in here in Cape Town.

The Race

On Saturday the first leg of the race sees the paddlers tackling a classic downwind run from Buffel's Bay to Fish Hoek in False Bay.  Buoyweather is forecasting a strong SSE wind which is ideal for this route.  The deep sea swell is also running from the south east which will make for big, exciting conditions in the bay. 

For the first five kilometers the skis will be hit almost side-on by the wind and breaking waves until they reach Batsata Rock on the south side of Smitswinkel Bay.  From there they turn to a more northerly course and will start to pick up the runs that will be angling in towards shore.  Another five km and they turn onto a north westerly course towards Fish Hoek.  Now they'll be on the Millers Run course and will revel in the big waves that will drive them to the finish.

Sunday's course will be decided according to the conditions on the day.

Watching the Race positions - real time

Visit http://www.sportstrack.net/  - click on Current Events and then on SURFSKI EVENTS THIS WEEKEND.

At approximately 10am tomorrow South African time, you'll see the markers start to move across the map from Buffel's Bay to Fish Hoek.

This is just the start of a new visualization of the sport and Surfski.info is working with SportsTrack to optimize the look & feel of the interface.  All comments and suggestions welcome.

So - give it go!  Well be making google earth tracks available after the race so that you can run the race again and see exactly who was in the lead, when!

Comments (5)

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Great idea...for most people
written by Derek Goldman, February 23, 2008

Really looking forward to "watching" the race - unfortunately these sportstrack folks discriminate against us Mac users and it only supports Windoze. That's unconstitutional dammit. Rise up Mac users and smite.

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All is not lost
written by Derek Goldman, February 23, 2008

Although both Explorer (Microsoft's own browser!! )and Safari don't work it seems Firefox does - so far anyway - the race starts in 20 minutes. Another great innovation Rob.
P.S. Rise up anyway and smite the devil Microsoft. Or go paddling. Whichever.

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Yes it is
written by Derek Goldman, February 23, 2008

Cancel last comment. Stop paddling. Rise up. Firefox shows the map but no tracks or anything. I'll stop now.

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This is killer
written by sbski, February 23, 2008

It's 1240am in Southern California and this race is awesome to watch. It's working on IE and I'm manually refreshing to keep up with the lead changes.

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...
written by Colombani, February 24, 2008

Should be fun to watch real time positions... but it was no real time. not every paddler's position was refreshed. Some paddlers were "frozen". Probably their tracking units were not working perfectly or their signals couldn't be received ? (I was using Internet Explorer 7)
This has to be improved but it is a great idea. Watched till the end of the race anyway...
Continue your good work. You're doing great !

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