November 7, 2009 saw the joining of two racing giants: ChronoTrack Systems and the Iceman Cometh Challenge Bicycle Race, the largest single-day mountain bike race in America. As the largest group of competitors in the history of the race, 4400 cyclists lined up that Saturday to compete in the 28-mile mountain bike race starting in downtown Kalkaska, Michigan.

This year’s Iceman Cometh Challenge was timed by Gault Race Management (GRM) of Flushing, Michigan, a longtime proponent of the ChronoTrack D-Tag. John Gault, owner of GRM, says that in his experience, “The optimal orientation of the tag is vertical. For the Iceman, we put the timing device upright on the back of the bike plates.”

It’s not the first time the D-Tag has been used in a cycling event, but it was evidently one of the most successful. Says Gault, owner of GRM, “We got 100% reads. 100%. That’s totally unheard of. Nobody will believe me when I tell them. You can look at the raw data. Every single cyclist, every single split, every single time.” That includes, he adds, all primary lines as well as backup lines.

The ChronoTrack System’s performance is not the issue, he says. The real problem, Gault says, is that there are “still so many people in the racing communities who have never heard of [the D-Tag or ChronoTrack]. We’ve got to get the word out.”

Gault Race Management also used ChronoTrack Systems to time this year’s NCAA Cross Country Championships, to great success. For more on the Gaults, see www.gaultracemanagement.com.