Posted: January 29, 2004

Triathlon: New USAT Information Source for Mid-Atlantic Multi-Sports

Quick and comprehensive multi-sport information, along with the nation’s most innovative regional race ranking system, now is available on-line in the Mid-Atlantic region, USA Triathlon – Mid-Atlantic announced today. The new USAT-MA website is a one-stop source for current race and related information on triathlons and duathlons in the seven-state Mid-Atlantic region.

The new website is now live at www.usat-ma.org. USAT-MA President Robert Vigorito announced the new website at the region’s annual meeting. "The Mid-Atlantic Region is home to one of the largest groups of active, multi-sport participants and home to some of the most exciting and beautiful multi-sport events in America,” he said. “It is only fitting that the region have a first-rate portal to bring new and current multi-sport athletes into our area and to provide regional athletes with a homepage they can call their own.”

The site assists members by listing continually updated information about upcoming events, hot-links to race entry forms, information on weather and directions to the venues, and racing rules. The site includes a very comprehensive regional Club Page that encourages clubs to post program information and messages for posting. It also provides recent minutes of USAT-MA Board of Directors meetings to enable members to stay current on important developments in the region., along with extensive personal contact information to ask questions or to provide feedback to the Board members.

The most innovative feature of the web site is the Regional Ranking System that ranks all member participants throughout the season by sex, age group, and multi-sport race type. The proprietary Lin-Mark EZE-In Ranking System was designed and is managed by Mark and Linda Toretsky and is continually updated as results are received from the region's race directors and posted. This process allows members to follow their ranking during the season compared to others and adjust their schedule or goals as the season progresses. Other competitor ranking systems usually only allow comprehensive ranking information public until after the season is over.

The most unique aspect of the system, however, is the gender-specific treatment of competitors. Most other ranking systems compare the fastest finisher to all other participants. The EZE-In system instead benchmarks all male competitors to the fastest male finisher and all female competitors to the fastest female time. This allows for a more intuitive and fairer presentation of relative rankings among peers. The USAT Board initially supported the development of the system and the system now is being used in other USAT regions.

Vigorito also reported that he expects traffic on the website to exceed 8,000 individual sessions per month as the easy-to-remember address: www.usat-ma.org becomes the favorite source for multi-sport event information in the region.

From USAT.