What the Sporlyst Tracker app asks your phone for and why, when your position is actually sent, and exactly who can see it.
Approximate location is accurate to roughly a city block. Everything the race does with your position needs better than that: which side of a checkpoint you are on, whether you crossed the finish line, and whether your last few fixes mean you stopped or crashed — crash detection works on a 100-metre circle. Every point the app sends is a real satellite fix; nothing is estimated.
"While using the app" ends the moment the phone goes in your pocket — Android and iOS both cut a backgrounded app off from location, and a dark screen counts. "All the time" is a permission, not a behaviour: the app records only while a tracking session you started is running, and nothing at all when it is paused.
No. Nothing is recorded or sent until you open the app and press START. It does not start on boot, when the race clock hits zero, or because you are near the start line. If the circle does not read TRACKING LIVE and there is no ongoing notification, you are not being tracked.
Yes, at any moment: tap the circle to pause, use Withdraw from race if you are abandoning, sign out in Settings, or revoke the location permission and uninstall. Uninstalling also erases the tracking code stored on the phone, which is the only personal data the app keeps on the device.
From the moment you press START, in the background, between every 30 seconds and every 4 minutes — tightest closing on a cutoff and on the run-in to the finish. With no signal it keeps recording and uploads the backlog, oldest first, as soon as there is coverage. Nothing is lost.
Thirty minutes before your route's official start, and no earlier. Riders switch trackers on at home, so positions from before that window are never served to the public map or the public rider trail. A race with no published start time shows nothing publicly at all. Race control's own view opens 45 minutes before the start.
No, and two things stop it. Nothing recorded before the 30-minute window is served publicly, and the public map does not plot raw GPS at all — it places every rider on the course line at their distance along it, so being somewhere the course does not go cannot put a pin there. Your race distance is counted from the start rather than from your front door.
On the public map you stop at the line: your marker is drawn at your distance along the course, and that distance ends at the finish, so riding on to the car park or home does not follow you there. The app does not stop itself, though — detecting a finish and ending a tracking session are different things. Pause it when you are done, because it is still using battery and data.
Your position on the course, name, bib number, speed, progress along the route, and which route you are on. Nothing else — no battery level, no GPS accuracy, no notes from race staff. "Position on the course" is literal: the public map draws you at your distance along the route line rather than at your raw fix, and the trail behind you is a segment of that line. Your email address and tracking code are never public.
Your actual GPS position rather than the course-line version the public map draws — an organizer who has to reach you needs to know where you really are. Also the map from 45 minutes before the start instead of 30, your phone battery and whether it is charging, the GPS accuracy of your last fix, and safety alerts derived from your track: missed cutoff, possible crash, silent tracker, SOS. Before the start they see counts only, never positions. Each account is scoped to one race.
Email support@sporlyst.com. There is no form and no account to sign into. Location history, entry record, tracking code and safety records are deleted within 30 days. A published result is treated separately as the public record of a sporting event, but it is removed too if you ask.
It sends race control an alert with your bib number and position, and raises an alarm on their screen until somebody claims it. It is not an emergency call — it reaches the organizer, not the ambulance service, so phone race emergency number first if it is serious. Only an organizer can close an SOS; cancelling in the app clears your banner, not their alert.
So that if something happens to you on a long course, somebody knows where you are — race control can tell a cafe stop from a crash within minutes. It also carries the SOS button, lets checkpoint crews know who has passed without stopping you, and lets your family follow the race in a browser with no app and no account.