Polar Flow – New EVENTS Functionality

This latest press release from Polar looks good.

You can either look at how you perform in certain events compared to other Polar  Users at the same event – could be your friends or it could be you want to do it anonymously after an AG race. I’m assuming you will be able to see MUCH more detail of everyone’s efforts rather than the simple splits you get in online race results.

There is also a piece of social functionality to enable you to share your preparations with fellow future competitors.

Similar in some ways to STRAVA segments in aspiration

It needs lots of Polar users doing the same events for it to work well. And this is an issue for nearly ALL of the sports data ecosystems. Lots of great ideas BUT a critical mass is needed to make it work.

Look at STRAVA segments…that patently works, on the whole. LOTS of people and virtually anyone with any device can join in.

But look at Garmin’s offering to do the same SEGMENT functionality…it doesn’t work. Not because Garmin have not got enough users, they clearly have, they (including me)can’t be bothered (and the functionality is a bit slow). Most of them/us already use STRAVA.

So I actually think Polar’s idea is a good one. If it were open to everyone to join in, it would be even better.

Clearly Polar are making inroads at opening up their data and it WOULD be possible to open a POALR account and migrate some of your data there but….

https://youtu.be/ZfNjFgzBsJA