How riders join¶

Once your event is published, riders need exactly two things to land on the leaderboard: the event's link (or QR code), and footage of their run. This page covers what to share and how the join flow looks from a rider's side.

You'll get a public URL and a QR code from us when the event is set up. Get them in front of riders wherever they'll see them:

physical signage at the venue — start gate, finish line, registration desk
the WhatsApp group — pinned message at the top
social posts — Instagram, Facebook, the event website
the rider briefing — verbal mention plus a slide with the QR

The QR is the easiest path. Riders scan it with their phone camera and they're on the event page in one tap.

What riders see when they land¶

The event page shows the title, dates, the reference run, and the live leaderboard. From that page, the rider taps an option to upload their own run, which opens (or installs) the Racecraft app and drops them straight into the upload flow for your event.

A rider doing this for the first time will:

install the app from the prompt (if they don't have it)
sign in or create an account
select the run footage from their phone
upload — Racecraft processes it in the background

A returning rider skips straight to step 3.

Tagging the rider on a run¶

The leaderboard ranks the rider in the video, not the account that uploaded the file. Most riders upload their own footage, so the two are the same person — but at smaller community events, it's common for one or two phones to upload runs for several riders.

When that happens, the uploader needs to tag each run with the correct rider name. The tag is what shows up on the leaderboard. If you forget, the leaderboard shows the uploader's account name, which is rarely what you want at a public race.

If you're acting as the uploader-of-record for the event, brief the people doing the uploading on this — it's the single most common thing to get wrong.

What happens after upload¶

Each new run is processed by Racecraft, aligned to the reference run, and added to the leaderboard automatically. The rider sees their own splits and time delta in the app; the public leaderboard updates for everyone watching.

Processing usually takes a few minutes per run. During a busy race day with many simultaneous uploads, it can take longer — the leaderboard catches up as runs finish processing.

Common rider issues¶

"my run doesn't appear on the leaderboard" — check the upload finished and processing is complete. If it's been more than 15 minutes, tell the rider to retry, and contact us if it persists.
"my run is on the leaderboard under the wrong name" — the athlete tag was missing or wrong. The uploader can re-tag the run and the leaderboard updates.
"I'm too late to upload" — uploads only land on the leaderboard during the event window. If a rider needs an exception for a late upload, that's an organizer call — let us know.

What to expect at the venue¶

Three patterns we see work well:

a printed QR poster at the start gate
a volunteer with a tablet at the bottom showing the live leaderboard
pinned QR + leaderboard link in the event WhatsApp group

If you have power and screens at the finish, the public leaderboard URL displayed full-screen is the most direct version of "everyone sees the times."