We’ve made all the tools you need to setup a race, promote it, and register all the racers, and keep track of all the racetimes and rank all the racers.
The Verdant Ride eFoil Racing League is everything we at Verdant Ride can do to help popularize eFoil racing around the globe.
- It gives the ability for ANYONE to register a racecourse ANYWHERE, promote the event to interested racers nearby, and invite racers to compete.
- Racers can register to compete in the race.
- A fully functional Race Marshal app that keeps track of every racer and their race times, with a photo-finish feature accurate to 1/60th of a second.
- Auto-ranks all riders per race and generates a leaderboard, along with photos and videos shot from the race that all registered riders can upload content to, turning any race event into a shareable, publicly viewable event.
The Verdant Ride eFoil Racing League is a race format built to run anywhere. Any lake, any bay, any wide stretch of river. You mark a course, you time riders, and the results drop into one global ranking alongside every other course in the league.
The format
- A half-mile racing line, about 2,640 ft, out and back combined.
- Four yellow turn buoys, with buoy 4 always the farthest one out. Two layout options are available, Extended and Compressed, detailed below.
- Two green gate buoys, 8 to 12 ft apart, form the start and finish line.
- Running start. You are already on foil and moving when you hit the gate.
- You have to stay on foil the whole way.
Extended
Zigzag through gates 1, 2 and 3, then a high-speed straightaway from 3 to 4. From buoy 4, it’s a straight run all the way back to the end gates. Best suited to longer, open bodies of water.
Compressed
Zigzag through gates 1, 2 and 3, then a short turn-around at buoy 4, heading back out through 3, 2 and 1 until crossing the end gates. Fits into smaller bodies of water by trading the high-speed straightaway for a repeat run back through all the buoys.
How a lake in Minnesota ranks against a bay in Portugal
Water is never the same twice. Chop, wind, current, and the shape of the shoreline all change what a fast time means, so raw seconds cannot be compared between venues.
Before racing starts, the Race Marshal runs the course all out. That reference time is measured against the league standard of 60 seconds, and the difference is applied to every rider at that race.
If the reference comes in at 69 seconds, the course rode nine seconds hard, and every rider drops nine seconds for ranking. If it comes in at 55, every rider gains five. Your raw time is always published alongside. The adjusted time is what ranks you against the world.
Why the turns matter
Three intermediate turn buoys create real direction changes instead of a straight drag race. The fourth buoy is the unambiguous end of the outbound leg. Carving those turns cleanly, and setting up early for each one, is what separates riders far more than top speed does.
See it in action: the race times itself
The Race Marshal app now times a race with nobody on the button. Machine learning watches the start and finish gate and trips the clock the instant a rider crosses it, so the timing is a photo finish accurate to 1/60th of a second, with the two frames it judged on kept against the run. Assigning runs to racers takes a tap, and the app handles the roster and the awards for the fastest riders from there.
Below is the first on-water test of the fully automated timer, start to finish.
Get on a start line
Everything above is the machinery. This is the part that actually matters: somebody else’s name sitting above yours on a board you both want the top of.
Race one
Find a race near you and register. Show up on foil, hit the gate at speed, and the timing takes care of itself — the camera judges the line to a sixtieth of a second and keeps the photograph that proves it. No stopwatch, no argument, nobody saying “I’m pretty sure that one was faster.”
Host one
Any lake, any bay, any wide stretch of river. Mark a course, register it, and the league does the rest: it promotes the race, takes the entries, builds the roster, times every run and ranks the field at the end. You bring the water and the buoys. You do not need a timing crew, a clipboard, or a friend you trust with a stopwatch.
Get invited — and do the inviting
Hosts can find the riders near their course and invite them by name. The invitation lands on your account and you accept or decline in a tap. Nothing sharpens a field like a rider who was asked personally and turned up intending to prove something.
Win one
The board is global. Every course is measured against the same 60-second league standard before anyone is ranked, so a clean run on a small Minnesota lake stands honestly against a bay in Portugal. Win at your home break and you have not only won at your home break — and the awards go to the fastest riders on their own, because nobody should have to remember to hand them out.
