What has this race got to do with British Cycling's Technical Services Team? Well, quite frankly, very little although there is a connection. We have operated outside the UK on many occasions and when this race in Singapore was first held in 2009 we were sounded out about doing the photofinish there as the organisers were struggling to find anyone local to do it. Sadly for me we were not required. However we do have a tenuous link to the race because our old friend Kannan, a guest member of our team who lives in Malaysia was on hand to advise. He sent some pictures for our interest.

The race itself was a crit on Sunday 7th March and the start/finish area shown in the main picture below was just in front of the F1 Pit Building. Note the different style of towers and gantry to that which we have traditionally been used to.

Now then, you can see from the general layout that the finishing line was directly in the middle of the two towers, but the image below clearly shows the FinishLynx camera on a large tripod similar to ours, which was to one side of a tower. Therefore it could not have been lined up properly. It took an email query from me to Kannan to get this little problem sorted out.

 

In the above photograph you can see a small window at the top of a tower. This housed the photofinish camera which was perfectly aligned with the finish. I guess that the height of it meant that some pretty good images were produced. My experience of filming through small openings like this is that the bottom of the opening can cut off the very nearside of the road. Still, it seems to have worked out OK.

 

There was a slight hiccup with this particular setup, because once the main camera was in position it could not be accessed again. Presumably the boarding was put on afterwards. As Kannan points out, this is not good. We all know that from time to time it may be necessary to readjust the camera. The following photograph shows the lens sticking out of the window.

 

Kannan has a great deal of photofinish experience, having worked with us using FinishLynx, and before that with Omega equipment at the horse racing track in Kuala Lumpur. After the first running of this race in 2009 he recommended that the organisers adopt a 'photofinish friendly' policy but sadly they ignored the advice. So his idea was to set up the extra camera on the tripod purely as a backup in case of problems with the main unit. Of course it would only have been able to read numbers and not placings, but it would have been better than nothing.

 

I'll finish with a couple of Kannan's pictures which show the photofinish table with the laptops, extra screen and the magic button in the hands of the operator. Kannan thinks this chap was from the athletics association which was why they relied on Kannan's expertise with cycling as we all know that most of the software settings would be different.

 

This race must have been hell to work on! Compare this to the back of our Vauxhall Vivaro vans.

As much as I love this country I think I might have just had my arm twisted to spend a few days in the heat and humidity of Singapore rather than a cold and windswept moorland over here.

 

 

Thanks for the pics and notes Kannan. You can be our roving Asia correspondent. More please.