IRONMAN has confirmed plans to provide advanced data tracking for all professional athletes at the IRONMAN World Championship, IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship and five regional IRONMAN Championships.
For each of these events, IRONMAN will produce IRONMAN Live, a hosted online show with extensive, in-depth coverage of the professional race. The coverage will include live GPS tracking for all professional athletes. In addition, professional athletes will be given the opportunity to opt-in to transmit biometric and power data to further enhance the live production.
The data will be integrated into IRONMAN’s new digital athlete tracking platform, IRONFAN, which is set to launch on www.ironman.com later this year. IRONFAN will combine long-distance GPS tracking with multisport biometric and power data presented in an intuitive, map-driven design.
“We believe this initiative will draw more attention to and improve engagement with our sport,” said Andrew Messick, Chief Executive Officer of IRONMAN. “We are taking a major step forward by leveraging technology to create a more colourful and comprehensive experience for fans and the media. Our hope is that we will be able to expand this innovation to all races and to age-group athletes in the future.”
After a successful pilot at the IRONMAN World Championship in 2014, IRONMAN will start to roll out the new technology for the live coverage in a beta test at the IRONMAN Asia-Pacific Championship in Melbourne on 22 March 2015.
