The Athletic Association of Guyana (AAG) installed a Fully Automatic Timing (FAT) System at the National Track and Field Centre on Saturday and took it for a successful test run a day later with a relay festival.
“It’s running perfectly,” president of the AAG, Aubrey Hutson told this publication yesterday.
“I’m very impressed with the kind of details we can get out of it.”
Hutson added:“We can differentiate results from 1000th of a second and the resolution of the camera that we have is very high.”
According to an online source, a fully automatic time is a form of race timing in which the clock is automatically activated by the starting device, and the finish time is either automatically recorded, or timed by analysis of a photo finish.
The system is commonly used in track and field as well as horse racing, dog racing, bicycle racing, rowing and auto racing.
It is also used in competitive swimming, for which the swimmers themselves record a finish time by touching a touchpad at the end of a race. In order to verify the equipment, or in case of failure, a backup system (typically manual) is usually used in addition to FAT.
According to Hutson, Allan Babolall travelled here from Trinidad to conduct a training clinic on the usage of the state of the art piece of equipment.
The AAG head informed Stabroek Sport that six individuals were trained to operate the FAT.
“I am satisfied with the people that we trained and I am happy that they had a chance to test it on Sunday, it was admirable. All in all it performed well during the 12-race relay festival.”
Athletes from the GDF, Running Brave, the Police Sports Club and Super Upcoming Runners competed at the relay meet.
