What the live map shows, how to find one rider among five hundred, and what the coloured lines mean. If your own tracking is not working, that is the other page: tracking help.
Yes. The day's route is drawn on the map as a coloured line, and your rider's marker moves along it — so you can see where they are relative to the track, how far through a section they are, and whether they have come off the line. Every class has its own colour and its own route, so a Gold rider is shown against the Gold course, not somebody else's.
| Gold | Yellow |
| Silver | Pale blue |
| Bronze | Orange |
| Iron | Red |
| SXS | Purple |
| Wet-weather alternate | Blue |
A wet-weather alternate. If the weather turns, race control can send riders down an easier line instead of the main route, and those alternates are drawn in blue so you can tell them from the class route.
A blue line on the map does not mean it is being used. They are drawn all the time and the call is made on the morning. Your rider is on whichever line his marker is actually following.
Yes. There are controls at the top of the map for Day and Class. There is a route for each riding day and each class, and drawing all of them at once is unreadable on a phone — so pick the day being ridden and the class you care about, and the rest disappears. Start and finish venues stay visible whatever you pick, because they serve everyone.
Spectator tracking opens on registration day, Wednesday 23 September. Before then the map is closed and the link will not work — that is deliberate, not a fault. Riders should still set their own tracking up as soon as they get their code; the two are separate.
Riders are different: signed in with your own race number and code, you can see your class’s route before the 23rd. This page is about the public map.
There will be a live tracking button on the front page of roa.wlab.co.za once it opens, and printed QR codes at the venues. You do not need an account, a password or an app — it opens in a normal web browser.
No — it starts empty on purpose. There are around five hundred riders, and putting them all on at once gives you a screen of overlapping pins and no way to find anybody. You choose who appears.
Tap All to see the full field, search by race number or name, and tap the star next to the riders you want. Then tap Favourites — that is your map from then on. It takes about ten seconds and you only do it once.
No. Your starred riders are remembered on that phone or computer, and the map reopens on them. They are stored on your own device, so everyone watching gets their own list even if you are all using the same link. They will not follow you to a different phone, and clearing your browser data clears them.
Yes — a link ending ?follow= and a race number opens the map already centred on that rider, with nothing to search or star. That is the link to forward to family who are not going to work out the app.
You get their race number and name, the time of their last report, and their speed at that moment. There is also a follow control — the map then re-centres on them as they move, without zooming in and out.
Almost certainly not. The Roof of Africa runs through valleys and gorges with no mobile signal at all. When a rider loses coverage their phone keeps recording and stores the positions until it can send them, so the marker sits still even though the rider is moving. When they come back into signal the whole gap fills in at once and the marker jumps forward. A long pause is far more likely to be a valley than a problem.
Roughly every half a minute to a minute while a rider is moving, and less often when they are standing still. Riders using a phone update more often than those carrying a fitted tracker, so some markers move more smoothly than others — both are working normally. What you see is always a little behind reality: seconds when signal is good, and much longer through the valleys.
GPS in steep terrain is not perfect, and a position taken against a cliff can be out by a fair distance. A single odd point is normal. The track as a whole is what to read, not any one marker.
The most likely reason is that they have not finished setting their tracking up, or their phone is out of signal and has not yet reported for the first time. Riders who never complete setup will not appear. This is not something a spectator can fix from their end.
No. It is not timing and it is not results. It shows where riders are, nothing more. Positions arrive late and unevenly depending on signal, so working out a finishing order from the map would be wrong. Official results come from the organisers.
The spectator view is a live map — it shows where riders are now, not a replay of where they have been. Follow a rider and watch them move along the route instead.
No. It is view-only. There is no messaging, no editing and no way to contact a rider through it. If you need to reach somebody, use the phone number you already have for them, and in a genuine emergency contact race control through the organisers.
The spectator view deliberately has no settings, no reports and no editing. If a control looks missing, it is missing on purpose.
No. Tracking covers the event, and the map shows riders during the race. It is not a history of anyone's movements.
Yes — it is built for a phone first. It also works on a tablet or a computer, in any normal browser. There is nothing to install.
At the start and finish venues, usually yes. Out on the course, mobile coverage is poor to non-existent in places, and the map needs a connection to update — so expect it to work at the bivouac and in the towns, and not half-way up a pass.
Very little. It is a map and a handful of moving markers, not video. Leaving it open all day is fine on a normal bundle; the map tiles are the largest part and they are only fetched as you move around.
Yes. Share it freely with family and friends — everyone gets their own starred list on their own device.