A small tech company that started in a Canmore basement is about to graduate into world leading status in Edmonton this weekend at the ITU World Championships, where their work will measure milliseconds for more than 4,000 athletes over the six-day event.

The contract is the biggest yet for Zone4, the registration and race timing systems company developed by former Olympic cross-country skier Dan Roycroft. The local business developed and built chips, server hardware, timing boxes and cutting edge software in the Bow Valley and grew rapidly over the past three years, moving from small cross country ski races to larger events such as the Canadian Birkebeiner (1,500 competitors) and Rocky Mountain Soap Run (2,500 runners) to more complex world cup races for skiing and triathlon.

Working with Linden Mills-Connery and Kyle Schrama, Zone4 has a team of seven at the triathlon championships, which requires an advanced chip and timing system that works in the water, transition zones, bike and run.

“This has been a monumental effort. Compared to this, the Olympics is dead easy,” said Roycroft. “At the Olympics, everyone knows where they’re going and they usually have one race.

“Here, you get the pros racing alongside the age group athletes, 11 different timing points, people going the wrong way and three different races a day … the complexity goes through the roof.”

Those demands, partnered with the desire to build durable, easy to use systems, have encouraged the company to push the innovation envelope to a higher level.

“Our goal is to be the largest timing hardware provider in the world. That includes registration club memberships. Right now, we have 800 clubs using it. That funds our research and development, so we can provide the entire package for sports clubs,” Roycroft said.

Currently, Zone4 has two sections: an online race and club registration section and a timing section. Thousands of racers across Canada use the online service, while hundreds of clubs rent Zone4 hardware to time events. Once Zone4 develops a product, the equipment is designed to be easy to use, so race organizers simply plug it into a laptop to run their race.

Earning the triathlon world championship contract was a wild ride in itself. Zone4 lucked into a race deal to time the triathlon world cup stop on June 23, 2013 in Edmonton. Two months before the event, they were told if they handled the world cup well and met the specs, they’d earn the world championship deal, their biggest ever.

The team was on target and confident they could handle the race. Then, three days before the race, the rains came. Canmore flooded.

“We were panicking. Every road out of Canmore was closed. We couldn’t get anything to Edmonton, and no other timing company could do the job on two days notice,” Roycroft said.

Miraculously, they were able to find a helicopter that would fly two staffers and a few pieces of equipment to Seebe. From there, Roycroft’s father-in-law managed to grab them and race up to Edmonton, where they had to buy everything they couldn’t get out of Canmore.

“We got to the site, set up the tent and madly spent the night welding pieces together and preparing equipment. There were wires and chips everywhere. The race organizer peeked in, said he’d never seen timers who could weld before, and said we’d be good for the world champs,” Roycroft said.

The landmark race is years in the making for Roycroft, whose goal was to build easy to use systems and hand them over to clubs in need of the technology. He’d love to develop a system that doesn’t require a technician onsite for events, – one that clubs can use themselves similar to the way anyone can use a smartphone: complex technology made simple.

“We’re not building for us. We build so they can go back to the clubs and they’re easy to use. The expectations people have is the entire package should have one button,” Roycroft said.

In order to create such a system, everything had to be built from scratch in the Bow Valley – a tough task when Zone4 is only one of two tech companies in Canmore (trail counter company Trafx Research is the other).

The company now has eight employees, and frequently hires ski racers on contract to build chips before events. For the past three years, they’ve developed their new system, and have plans for an even better system in the near future.

“What will be needed in five years, in 10 years, that’s what we’re working on now. We have something in development that will make current technology virtually obsolete.”

The company has had great success, and plans to expand into the United States in order to keep their business growing. .

Roycroft became interested in computer science at a young age and as a cross-country skier, saw the need to develop reliable, easy to use chip timing technology, online registration software and database use for sport.

“I developed my very first timing app in high school. For me, I always loved race timing. I went to university and thought someone would do this. No one did, so I decided to do it myself,” Roycroft said.

After retiring from ski racing in 2010, Roycroft focused on Zone4 exclusively and began developing the race registration and timing company.

He first operated the company out of his basement apartment, tinkering away at his dream. Lappe Nordic was the first to sign on, and now hundreds use the system every year.

“The races give us great research and development every year,” Roycroft said. “And we’ve employed a tonne of ski racers.”