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StatLap vs Freelap: when you need transponders and when a phone will do

Freelap is the reference for flying sprints. Here is what it does that phones cannot, and what a phone does that a chip never will.

Freelap is transponder timing: the athlete wears a chip, gates on the track record the moment it passes, and the times are as good as the placement of the gates. Sprint coaches who can afford it swear by it, and they are right to. A phone is not a transponder. This post is about what that costs and what it buys.

What Freelap does that a phone cannot

• Times that do not depend on a camera seeing the athlete: no lane confusion, no glare, no tripod height.
• Splits every ten metres from one run, which is how you find where top speed happens rather than guessing it.
• Several athletes through the same gates in a session with no one at the line.

What a phone does that a chip never will

• A picture. The finish frame is kept, and a place can be checked by looking rather than by trusting.
• Nothing to buy, charge, carry or lose. The phones are already in the pockets.
• The run becomes a clip. Speed, cadence, ground contact and the form check come from the same recording as the time.
• Field events, heats, a results site. Freelap times; it does not run a meet.

The honest middle

StatLap has speed gates: two phones any distance apart, each aimed across its own line, giving the segment time and the speed. It is a flying 30 for the cost of nothing. It is not ten-metre splits and it is not chip accuracy. A programme that tests speed every week and can pay for gates should own gates. A coach with one athlete, one phone and a Tuesday should open the app.

• How to time a flying 30 without buying timing gates
• Where does your sprinter actually hit top speed?

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