Garmin Acquires MyLaps – what this means for our watches and bike computers

Yesterday, Garmin acquired MYLAPS, a Dutch race timing and tracking systems company, to enhance its training and race-day technology offering across many sports, including running and cycling.

However, this is significantly more than the acquisition of a mere ‘Race Timing Chip’ company, typical of the ones we see every year at our races. MyLaps has some quite unusual and interesting products that, no doubt, attracted Garmin’s interest across the board. The acquisition is significantly more than a grab for a new revenue stream, as it will complement many of Garmin’s existing products and activities. Amongst other things, this will ultimately lead to novel features in our watches and bike computers.

Let’s take a step back and look at the products and services Garmin has just acquired, and then I’ll share some ideas on how they work with Garmin’s known technologies and how the various integrations and features might pan out over the years ahead. The first caveat to add is that the focus seems to be on the race-day experience, so bear that in mind as you read on.

We look forward to setting a new standard for performance-focused training and race-day technology. [Trenkle, Garmin COO]

Core Timing System Technologies

There are several ways to categorise MyLaps products.

Some products are passive timing chips, worn by the athlete might wear, and detected by another part of the MyLaps ecosystem – a familiar example would be a disposable chip (BibTag) worn for the Rotterdam Marathon.

Other products are active chips, which could be rented or permanently owned by the athlete (ProChips, FLEX). These have a greater capability to send and receive information.

Those chips are key parts of  the timing systems’ common core components:

• Transponders: Each participant wears a transponder with a unique ID.
• Detection Loops/Mats: These are installed at start lines, finish lines, and intermediate points to pick up transponder signals. For road cycling or ultra running, loops can be strategically placed along the course.
• Decoders: These devices translate the vast amount of data from simultaneous passings into usable information, decoding athlete IDs and measured times.
• Timing Software: Interrogates the decoder information to set up, time, create, and publish results.

Some of MyLaps’ products are claimed to be highly accurate to 1/1000th of a second, perhaps more suited to pro events like Road Cycling or BMX.

Other Recent Moves By Garmin

We’ve seen Garmin invest further in 5Hz data recording, headlined for MTB ride usage but handy elsewhere. 5Hz data recording is all about the precise recording of distance (and hence speed), and its impact becomes more acute the faster the athletes travel. Thus, this is more useful for high-speed events like downhill MTB and sail Racing. The link with race timing here is hopefully obvious!

Less obvious would be integrating a timing system with a transition in a triathlon. I’d previously assumed that the ability to set the geolocation of timing gates (for MTB) would soon translate to the ability to mark transition gates before a triathlon. Garmin has undoubtedly thought of that, but the obvious improvement would be to have an electronic system that triggered the move into or out of transition. I suspect MyLaps’ timing chips are simply that at present – timing chips. Perhaps in the future, a Garmin watch will be able to detect a coded signal from a transition timing mat to automatically initiate the transition. That would be cool.

Garmin’s Marathon Race Series is a series of Garmin-branded marathon races in the USA and which will clearly benefit from Garmin’s own race timing systems.

new Garmin Forerunner Naming Officially Explained…kinda

Impacts on Watches and Bike Computers

Garmin watches and bike computers could integrate with the active transponders. Thus, start, lap and finish times are triggered externally. Your recorded stats perfectly match the race stats for accurate post-race insights, with none of the errors you introduce from pressing buttons at the wrong time. Furthermore, as you race, intermediate points are also correctly triggered, giving you real-time insights into true performances on any given lap/split. As mentioned in the previous section, this might one day include automated triathlon transitions.

It may be more than an interesting coincidence to note that Garmin has started its own series of marathon races in the USA. Perhaps in its own-branded races, Garmin will leverage MyLaps systems to show accurate live data to spectators and followers, provided there are sufficient detection points, a holistic race view of all competing athletes could be available. – I would distinguish this from Live-Track, which simply shows your position to friends. Of course, this has been done before, but perhaps richer data indicating the athletes’ performance could also be visible, eg power, although that could be tricky to get pro teams to make that info publicly available.

Further comments by the CEO

MyLaps is a company that specializes in timing of competitive events, whether they’re running events, triathlons, auto racing, or even horse racing. And so, you know, their equipment and their services are very critical, especially to some of those high-visibility events that are out there. Market interest and our interest in terms of particularly the running and triathlon, cycling, racing, events. Today, users of Garmin Ltd. devices use them for training. And then when they go to race day, they use our devices, but the official timing is somewhat separate and disconnected from the devices that they’re using during the race.

So we see an opportunity to merge the experiences from the training that takes place leading up to an event through the actual participation in the event itself, and we can do it in a dynamic and integrated way because we now have access to both the on-wrist information as well as the official timing information.[Pemble, CEO]

Take Out

The direction of travel for Garmin with the acquisition feels more linked to the company supporting pro races and running and equipping its own series of events, rather than adding new features to watches and bike computers.

That said, I hope we will see a few, small and novel ways that boost the accuracy and availability of race timing features on our Garmin devices

Sources and Resources

• Official Website: MyLaps
• Official Website: Garmin
• Garmin Marathon Series
• Press Release: Garmin Acquires MyLaps