Glossary

EVENT's words, in the sense the software uses them. Each term points to the screen where you work with it. The examples come from speed skating, but the concepts apply to any timed sport.

The event and its races

Event: A competition: the Coupe Hollywood longue piste, the Omnium Hollywood courte piste. It has a mode, a template, races and entries. Its name is also the name of the competition in FINISH. See Events and context.
Mode (Time, Position): Chosen when the event is created, and fixed. Time: the final time counts; athletes start in heats (pairs, waves, group starts) and are ranked by time across all heats. Position: the finishing place counts; the race is run in rounds. The interface shows only what the mode needs.
Context: The sport, discipline, country, province, venue and track of this computer. It filters the list of events and decides what is offered. See the context.
Common data: The shared lists published by Technofeed (countries, sports, disciplines, venues, tracks, clubs, categories, catalogue races, federation templates), updated over the internet.
Race: A distance raced by a group of athletes: “500 m Women”, “1500 m Men”. It has a rule (its model), a point table, its track, and its heats. See Races.
Race type: A race prepared in the template, copied into every event created from it.
Heat: One start: athletes who start together and are timed together. It is what FINISH calls a “race”. In EVENT, it is also called a heat by name.
Heat (name): What EVENT calls a heat (“Heat 4”): in Time mode, athletes who start together and are ranked by time with those of the other heats; in Position mode, a heat of a round (“12A”).
Pair: A heat of two athletes, each in their own lane (“Pair 3”). The usual format in long track.
Quartet: Two heats grouped to be raced together on the track (two pairs, or two heats of any size), forming a group; with “Group: unique start position”, their start positions follow on (1-2, 3-4). See Quartets.
Heat group (G1, G2…): Heats raced at the same time on the track, side by side in the Line-up view. FINISH loads them together.
Formation group: In Time mode, a level group formed from performance (“Group 2”): heats are drawn within each group. Not to be confused with the heat group or with the entry group.
Group (entry): A free text given on the entry (“A”, “Elite”): it is used for the combined standings by group and for the cumulative ranking in Position mode.
Round: In Position mode, a stage of the race: qualification, quarterfinals, semifinals, finals. The places in a round decide who moves on to the next one.
Plan, stage, X+Y criterion: The plan of a race in Position mode: its rounds and their stages (final A, final B…). The X+Y criterion of a stage: the first X of each heat advance, plus Y others (by time, or by rank). See Plan.
Progression table: In a Position model, the plan to apply depending on the number of entries (“17 to 24 entries: qualification 4 × 2+2, semis 2 × 2+1”).
Advanced: An athlete whom the referee moves on to the next round without qualifying (impeded by a fall, for example), through an officiating code.
Safety semi-finals: When final A overflows (too many qualifiers, advanced athletes), two extra semis (A+, B+) instead of an overcrowded final.

The entries

Athlete: The person, in the athlete database (shared by all competitions and by FINISH). An entry links them to an event (bib, category, group, status) and to their races.
Reference: An athlete's identifier everywhere (session file, .LIF, overall standings): “A035”.
Affiliation, member number: Membership of a national federation (SKF in the examples) and the member number. Two different numbers in the same federation are two different people.
Category: An age group (U13, U15, Senior, Master 35…), calculated from the date of birth on the reference date (July 1 by default).
Entry status: Entered, Confirmed, Absent, Withdrawn. Only entered and confirmed athletes go into new heats.
Joker: An athlete placed among the fastest by default (a top-level athlete with no recent time).
Guest: Ranked, but keeps guest status (unofficial, depending on the template).
Pre-qualified: In Position mode, an athlete who goes straight into the second round.
Bib: The number worn by the athlete for the event. A duplicate bib is shown in red.

Forming the heats

Performance (seeding): The time that ranks an entry before the race, to form heats of similar level: recent performances, the result of another race, the entry time… according to the template's chain of sources. See Performance.
SSR performances: Performances read from SpeedSkatingResults, in long track speed skating only.
Seed: The number that fixes the randomness of a draw: the same seed gives the same heats again.
Start position, lane: An athlete's place at the start (lane 1 or 2 of a pair, position in a heat). Each position has its start color (cap or armband: white, red, yellow, blue by default).
Locked heat: A heat that a regeneration no longer touches, and whose athletes no longer move (padlock on its card).
Started heat: A heat whose start has been given (in EVENT or in FINISH): its athletes no longer change.

The rules

Template: The rules of an event: categories, officiating codes, point tables, formulas, performance sources, models and race types. A shared template comes from the national federation; the event keeps a copy. See Event template.
Race model: In the template, how the heats of a race are formed: groups and heats (Time), rounds and qualifications (Position).
Officiating code: DNF, DNS, DQ, NT…: what happens to an athlete instead of a result, with its effect on the ranking. A reason (“P-CHARGE”) gives the reason for a penalty.
Point table: The table of points by rank (“10 8 6 5 4 3 2 1”).
Formula, variable: A calculation on the times of the races, each named by its variable (“t500”, “t1500”): “t500 + t1500/3”.
Start line: The distance from the start to the first crossing of the finish line (1500 m on a 400 m track: 300 m), as in FINISH.
Finish line, track zero: Where the finish line is, in meters after the track zero (the middle of the bottom straight), in the direction of racing (usually 56 m in long track).

Times and standings

Technology (PC, TR, PF, MAN): A timing system: PC photocell, TR transponder, PF photo finish, MAN manual timer. Several can time the same heat.
Selected time (FIN): The time FINISH selects among those of the technologies (the master station's, otherwise the preferred one). It is a cumulative time from the start: in a tile of the overall standings, FIN is the race time at the end of the lap, not the lap time.
Official time (OFF): The decided time: taken from a system, entered by hand or kept from a provisional time. It takes precedence over all others. Like FIN, it is a cumulative time (the official time at the tile's distance; faded until there is one).
Provisional time: The time that ranks a row that does not have an official time yet: the preferred system's, otherwise another's. In italics.
Overall standings: The standings, race by race, from the timing, with each technology, lap by lap. See Overall standings.
Combined standings: The standings of the event with all races together (formula, points, times converted to 500 m). See Combined standings.
Make official: Make results official: a heat (Results tab) is then locked; a race whose heats are all official is “official” on the scoreboards.
Log: The record of every intervention (who, when, what, before / after, reason), viewable in the event log.

Exchanges

Shared database: A PostgreSQL server where EVENT and FINISH work together: heats go across without a file (Send to FINISH).
.cfevent, .evt file: The session file EVENT writes for FINISH (.cfevent, complete) or for FinishLynx (.evt).
.LIF file: The results file of a heat written by a timing system; EVENT imports it into the overall standings.
Broadcast: Sending the standings of the races to the TABLEAU scoreboards. See Broadcast.