WHY WE STARTED
When Covid-19 struck, we saw a lot of events being cancelled or postponed due to social distancing. We asked ourselves if it was possible to still have the spirit of a race without the crowds and the hype of a one-day event. We narrowed it down to two key metrics - An official track and an official time. This is where “Official tracks” was born.
Our founder Tuki Huck, having worked in the events industry for years, understood the challenges that comes with organising an event. He started Official Tracks to provide communities with opportunities to measure their race performance that were easy to use and share but required none of the logistics of race organisation.
During lockdown, when running events around the world were being cancelled, he saw an opportunity to provide a new race experience for the community he lived in. With social distancing and a time poor world we loved that our race can be run at any time.
A START UP STORY
Official Tracks is a Queenstown small business start-up that was born during lockdown. In April 2020, Crux Queenstown ran a community campaign looking for business ideas within the community to help with economic recovery. We pitched Official Tracks as a new running experience and were shortlisted. While it did not get selected as a winning entry, the process of participating in Project Phoenix opened some avenues for the idea to develop.
Jonathan Gurnsey, Chairman of Project Phoenix, believed in Official Tracks and Tuki’s infectious “can do” positive attitude, so he continued to mentor Tuki and helped fund the project. Jonathan introduced Andrew Orr, an ex-IMG legal executive who was keen to come on board as the legal advisor. The Mountain club, supported Tuki by offering him a flexible workspace which gave access to amazing entrepreneurs and like minded people such as Max Norton who designed the Official Tracks website.
Our tech partner MyLaps, an industry leader in timing technology, were also taken with the idea, they lent us hardware to support our testing and installation of the timing gates.
We continue to work with lots of wonderful businesses and community groups including our local council who have been key to shaping our vision for the tracks.
Our Vision
We believe that TIME is our most important resource.
We believe your best time can happen anytime.
We are here to capture that moment.
We were always passionate about starting in Queenstown but ultimately want to create a network of tracks around the world. Our goal is to have running tracks in every city and the experience to be open to travellers, athletes, families, and communities.
When you hear the term “Official Tracks”, we want you to immediately relate and know the type of experience it is.
