With 35 000 participants expected in next year`s Argus Cycle Tour, organisers have come to rely on the Internet as a way of managing the process.
Cyclists appear to be just as eager to enter online, with almost half of the expected 32 000 online entries being filled within the first week since opening for business.
Pat White, Argus Events Office administration manager, says the uptake of online entries has been significant in the last two years, with 28 000 cyclists entering online for the 2002 event and 32 000 expected to do so for next year`s race.
"We are getting about 2 000 entries a day," says White. "But what is really interesting is that about 700 or 800 come in overnight, indicating that a lot more people have access to computers and the Internet at home now than they did in the past." Last year this figure was about 350 a night.
White says the uptake of entries in this year`s event have been a lot quicker than expected, a fact she attributes to the e-mails sent out to all previous participants. Entries for next year`s Argus are limited to 35 000 with only 3 000 allocated to "offline" entries.
Online entries, particularly for cycling, "have very definitely taken off", she says. And although there is still some "reluctance" from users to put their credit card details online, the organisers have elected to accept only credit card entries. "Managing other methods of payment would be too difficult for this number of entries."
While most users are seemingly accustomed to the online entry format, there are still a few problems, largely as the result of user errors, "although these are diminishing".
White says last year only 1 000 of the 28 000 credit card transactions did not go through first time, mainly because of incorrect details, but most of these were resolved before the start of the race.
The Argus is just one of the many events that are taking advantage of online entries and a substantial portion of cycling events in the country are processed through the Internet. The majority of those are through the Cyclelab and Supercycling Web sites that merged late last year. Cyclelab is the company run by one of SA`s best-known cyclists, Andrew McLean, and is one of the pioneers of the online entry format.
McLean`s tandem cycling partner and one of the top women cyclists in the country, Mari Rogers, originally wrote the software that handles the online entries for the Argus and all of the Cyclelab-managed entries.
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