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Status and race time rules ​

Audience: Event organisers and operators needing to understand why a competitor has the status or race time that Manager is showing.

Every competitor has a status (OK, MP, DNF, On Course, …) and, once they finish cleanly, a race time. Manager sets both for you as the day unfolds — a start time passes, a radio punch arrives, a card is downloaded — so most of the time you never touch them. This page explains the rules behind those automatic changes so that when a status looks wrong you know why Manager decided it, and which lever fixes it.

Manager uses the term On Course in the UI for a competitor who has started but not yet finished. Other event systems call this In Forest. This page uses On Course throughout.

The status values ​

StatusShown asWhat it means
None(blank)No result yet. Manager has no evidence the competitor has started or finished.
On CourseOn CourseHas started but not yet finished — out on the course right now (or a no-show whose start time has passed; see below).
OKOKFinished with a valid result. Can be provisional (from a radio finish, before the card is read) or final (from the card download).
MissingPunchMPCard was downloaded but one or more required controls weren't punched.
DidNotFinishDNFEither the card was downloaded and had no finish punch, or a finish-station read accounted for them at the finish but with no card to validate. See How a DNF happens.
DidNotStartDNSNever started.
DisqualifiedDSQDisqualified by the operator.
OvertimeOVTFinished but over the permitted course time.
OutOfCompetitionOOCHas a valid time but isn't counted in the ranked results — e.g. a course tester or a runner from another class.
NoTimingNTTook part but with no electronic timing — e.g. a beginner without a card.
NotParticipatingNPIn the entry list but explicitly not running this event. Also set automatically if a card is evaluated for a competitor who has no class.
CancelledCANThe entry was cancelled.

How a status gets set ​

Three things set status on their own, and you can always override the result by hand. They build on each other through the day — a start time passes (→ On Course), a radio finish arrives (→ provisional OK), then the card is read (→ final OK or MP).

1. The clock — start time passes ​

A background timer runs every few seconds. When a competitor with status None has an allocated start time and that time passes, Manager moves them to On Course — even with no radio start punch. This is deliberate: people show as out on the course even at events with no start radio.

Important: because a passed start time alone is enough, your On Course list at the end of the day normally includes every no-show who had a start time but never turned up. They aren't a safety problem, but you can't tell them apart from genuinely missing runners just by looking — clearing them with a DNS sweep is what makes the list meaningful. See Safety check.

2. Radio punches ​

Where radio controls are in use, punches drive status as they arrive:

  • A start punch moves a None competitor to On Course and records a punched start — which becomes their start time unless the punching-start override keeps an allocated time instead.
  • A normal control or check punch also moves them to On Course — Manager now knows they're physically out there, even if it missed the start.
  • A finish punch moves a None or On Course competitor to a provisional OK with a race time (see Provisional vs final OK).
  • Once a competitor has a final result, radio punches no longer change their status or start time.

3. Card download — the authoritative result ​

When a card is downloaded and assigned to a competitor, its punches are evaluated against the competitor's course. This is the authoritative result and replaces any provisional one:

  1. No finish punch on the card → DNF.
  2. All required controls punched → OK, with a race time. Extra punches that aren't part of the course are ignored.
  3. One or more required controls missing → MP (no race time).
  4. Competitor has no class → NP.

If the class has a pool of several courses, the card is checked against each: the first course that produces a clean OK wins. If none is clean, Manager keeps the best near-miss (an MP is preferred over a DNF, and among MPs the one with the fewest missing controls).

Manager re-evaluates the download automatically when something relevant changes — the competitor's class, the class's course assignment, or the course's control list. There's no separate recalculate step.

Unassigning a download clears the competitor's result back to None (status, time and splits reset). The start time is kept, since it may have come from the start list rather than the card.

4. Operator overrides ​

You can set a status by hand on the competitor's Result tab, and bulk-set no-shows to DNS from the Competitors list. Two rules protect real data:

  • You can't force OK. OK always needs a race time, and Manager re-checks it against the punches — set OK on someone still missing a control and it's corrected straight back to MP. To turn a genuine MP or DNF into OK, fix the underlying punches on the Overrides tab and the result follows.
  • You can't reset to None while there's evidence they took part — a race time, a downloaded card, a start/finish/check punch, or radio punches. Manager tells you which evidence is blocking the reset so a genuine result is never erased by relabelling. (An allocated start time alone doesn't count as evidence — a no-show auto-flagged On Course can still be set to DNS.)

Reading a control unit's backup memory also changes status — a start or check station read promotes a None competitor to On Course, and a finish station read marks an On Course competitor DNF (see How a DNF happens). See Station Memory and Safety check.

How a DNF happens ​

DNF lands on a competitor two different ways, and they mean slightly different things:

  • From the card download. The card was read and evaluated, but it had no finish punch — they genuinely didn't record a finish. This is the literal "did not finish".
  • From a finish-station read. This is the one that surprises people: punching the finish is a finish, so why DNF? Because reading the finish unit's backup memory tells Manager only that a card crossed the finish — it carries no course splits, so there's nothing to check the run against and Manager can't award an OK. It records DNF as a deliberate "safe but unverified" state: the competitor is accounted for (they came back, so they drop off the On Course list and out of the safety count) but they don't yet have a validated result.

So a DNF from a finish-station read is really "returned, not yet verified" rather than "didn't finish". Download their card to turn it into the real result — OK, MP, or a genuine DNF. Manager only does this to someone who was On Course: it won't DNF a competitor who never started (status None), and it leaves an already-final result (a real OK/MP/etc.) untouched.

Provisional vs final OK ​

A competitor can be OK in two ways:

Provisional OKFinal OK
Comes fromA radio finish punchThe card download (or a manual override)
Race timeYesYes
PositionAssigned, but may still changeFinal once no one left can beat it
On leaderboardsTime shown with a *, in italics, no medalsShown normally, with medals
On the Results screenHidden unless you tick Provisional results (off by default); then shown with a *, and carried into the PDF/print that mirrors the screenAlways shown
In uploaded or exported official results (IOF XML, public results)Never includedIncluded

A provisional OK means the competitor crossed a radio finish and has a time and a position, but the result isn't confirmed until the card is read. When the card is downloaded, Manager recalculates everything from the card (the authoritative source): the status may become OK, MP or DNF, the race time and start time are taken from the card, and the result becomes final.

How race time is calculated ​

Race time = Finish time − Start time

Only a competitor who is OK and has a positive race time is ranked in results. Any other status — MP, DNF, DNS and the rest — carries no race time.

A competitor's start time comes from one of two kinds of source:

  • an allocated start you set in advance — an individual time, a class mass start, or an event mass start, with the most specific winning (the start-time hierarchy); or
  • a punched start the competitor records on the day, from a Start unit (read off the card or from a radio Start control).

When a competitor has both, the punching-start override decides which is used. It is not fixed: by default a punched start overrides the allocated one, but this is a setting — configured per event (copied from a new-event default) and overridable per competitor (so you can make the allocated time win, or force the punch to win, for one runner). With the override off, the allocated time wins and the punch is kept as a fallback; with it on, the punch wins and the allocated time is the fallback. When only one of the two exists, that one is used. See Punched starts for the full hierarchy.

Manager resolves all of this for you and shows a small source label (individual, class, event, or punched) wherever a start time appears, so you can see where each competitor's time came from. The resolution falls back through:

  1. A manual override you set on the Overrides tab — beats everything.
  2. The effective start from the allocated/punched sources above.
  3. A check punch, used only during a card download when nothing above has supplied a start. (A check punch is never gated by the punching-start override — it's a last resort, not a start punch.)
  4. None — as a final fallback the start is treated as zero, so race time equals the finish time and the competitor sorts to the bottom until you give them a real start.

Which source wins when sources disagree ​

  • Card download beats radio punches. A provisional OK from a radio finish is replaced by the card result, whatever it turns out to be. The card is the record of truth.
  • Punched vs allocated start is the organiser's call, not a fixed rule. When a competitor has both, the punching-start override — set per event, optionally per competitor — decides which is used. By default the punch wins, but you can flip it.
  • A control's time offset applies to everything. If you correct a control's clock with a Time Offset, it's applied to every punch on that control — card and radio alike — and retrospectively, re-timing punches that already came in.

Worked examples ​

Finishes but forgets to punch the finish. The card has no finish punch, so the download evaluates to DNF. If they really did finish, override the finish time on the Overrides tab and the result becomes OK.

Card download contradicts the radio punches. They show a provisional OK from a radio finish, but the card is missing a control. The download wins: the status becomes MP and the provisional OK disappears from the official results.

Allocated morning start but no punch all day. The start-time timer flips them to On Course when their start passes, and they sit there all day because no finish ever arrives. At wrap-up, confirm they never started and sweep them to DNS. See Resolving issues on the day.

Relay leg missing a punch. The leg is evaluated against its course like any other card, so a missing required control gives that leg MP. Fix it the same way — override the punch if it's a genuine equipment miss.

How results are ordered ​

Within a class, competitors sort best-to-worst by status group — OK, then On Course, then None, then the non-finishing statuses (Overtime, NoTiming, MP, DSQ, DNF, DNS, NP, OOC, Cancelled). Within OK they sort by race time, fastest first; On Course runners sort by projected finish time; equal times share a position and the next position is skipped accordingly.