World Athletics Integration¶
OpenTrack's integration with the World Athletics Calendar and results system is in the final stages of development, and will shortly allow event organisers to use OpenTrack to submit competitions to the World Athletics Calendar in advance, and submit results afterwards.
Due to World Athletics' limitations on the use of their API, this feature is only available in countries where we have a formal agreement with the member federation, and have been granted access by World Athletics.
Currently, these countries are:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cyprus
Malta
North Macedonia
Norway
Serbia
If you are a federation adminstrator for a country not listed above, but you would like this functionality to be available in your country, please get in touch.
Understanding the World Athletics Integration Management Screen¶
For all competitions, you can add World Athletics Event IDs to individual events in OpenTrack — this is necessary for both World Athletics calendar and results submission.
The subsequent steps vary depending on whether a competition in OpenTrack has a linked World Athletics Competition ID.
For competitions without a competition ID, you will see a World Athletics Calendar Submission box containing various options for adding one, including making a submission to the World Athletics Calendar via OpenTrack.
For competitions with a competition ID, you will see a World Athletics Results Submission box allowing you to check and submit results to World Athletics after the conclusion of your competition.
Understanding World Athletics Event IDs
Event Codes vs World Athletics Event IDs
If you have set up a competition in OpenTrack before, you will be familiar with OpenTrack's event codes, which tell OpenTrack what athletics event it's dealing with.
These are designed to be intuitive — 100 is the code for 100 metres, 200 is 200 metres, and so on, and field events use obvious abbreviations, like HT5K for 5 kilogramme hammer throw. We distinguish between age groups, genders, and indoor/outdoor competitions separately from where we define events.
World Athletics instead uses numerical IDs to represent athletics events, which cannot be intuited, and there is often specific age group, gender, and indoor/outdoor data baked into these. For example, 10229509 is the women's 100 metres outdoors, whilst 10229862 is boys' 4 kilogramme shot put indoors.
To submit an event to World Athletics, we need to give it the correct event ID — they simply will not accept data without this information.
Complications
Some events are fairly simple to convert — an event with OpenTrack code 100 restricted to gender M in the event grid of an outdoor competition, for example.
However, others are impossible to determine without further user input. As an example, with event code 100H and gender F in the event grid of an outdoor competition, OpenTrack has no way to determine whether this is women's 100 metre hurdles at the normal 84cm height (ID 10229522), or at the lower 76cm height (ID 10229831).
As a result of this, for some events within your competition, you will need to clarify the specifics of your event.
Events¶
Adding World Athletics Event IDs to your events in OpenTrack is crucial if you wish to submit a calendar application, or the results of your competition.
For most competitions, the bulk of World Athletics Event IDs can be added automatically. For those events where OpenTrack is not able to automatically find a corresponding World Athletics Event ID, you will need to select one.
If you already have World Athletics Event IDs set for all events, you will see a message confirming this and can skip to calendar/results submission.
Note
If your competition already exists in the World Athletics Calendar, but the World Athletics Competition ID has not yet been added to OpenTrack, there is no need to do anything to your events before adding your competition ID
Automatically Adding IDs¶
The simplest way to add most World Athletics Event IDs to your competition is to click ADD WA EVENT IDS.
This button is also available on the Events and Scoring management screen.
After clicking, you will receive a notification containing the events for which OpenTrack was able to automatically add World Athletics Event IDs.
If you have recently made changes to your event grid, click the button again to add event IDs to your newly updated events.
Manually Adding IDs¶
For events where it is not possible to find an event ID automatically, you will need to select the correct event.
Why can I not add a World Athletics Event ID for one of my events?
If the automatic process has not found a World Athletics Event ID for your event, and you have no options from which to add one, this will be because there are no World Athletics Events that exist for your event code.
There are plenty of events that are contested regularly that do not have World Athletics Event IDs, and as such will not be included in any submissions.
These will often be junior events (e.g. 80H, 75, SP2.72K).
World Athletics Calendar Submission¶
For competitions without a World Athletics Competition ID in OpenTrack, there are three options. For events already in the World Athletics Calendar, you can either manually enter an ID or use the World Athletics API lookup.
For events not yet in the World Athletics Calendar, you can submit a calendar application through OpenTrack.
Option 1 — Manually Enter WA ID¶
If you know the World Athletics ID for your competition, you can simply enter it here.
How do I find my competition's World Athletics Competition ID?
At present, World Athletics do not make competition IDs readily available — for the vast majority of competitions, if they exist in the World Athletics Calendar and you wish to add the competition ID to OpenTrack, you will need to use Option 2 and search using the World Athletics API instead.
If your event is on the World Athletics Continental Tour, it is possible to look at the HTML of the World Athletics page and collect the competition ID from there.
Option 2 — Search World Athletics API¶
If you don't know the World Athletics ID for your competition, but it already exists in the World Athletics Calendar, you can use the lookup feature to add the correct ID, allowing you to submit results after your competition concludes.
Note
If your competition is not appearing in the lookup, have a look at the World Athletics Calendar and search for the name it is listed under there
Option 3 — Create World Athletics Calendar Application¶
If you wish to use OpenTrack to add your competition to the World Athletics Calendar, clicking CREATE sends an application off to World Athletics.
If your competition has been accepted into the World Athletics Calendar, CHECK STATUS will collect the competition ID.
Understanding the CHECK STATUS button
The World Athletics API does not provide a mechanism for OpenTrack to check the status of submitted calendar applications.
The CHECK STATUS button queries the World Athletics Calendar to see if a competition matching the name and date of your OpenTrack competition exists — if it does then the assumption is that the calendar application has been successful.
If you change the name or date of your competition on OpenTrack between submitting your calendar application and having it approved, the CHECK STATUS button will no longer work — you should instead attempt to use the lookup in Option 2.
World Athletics Results Submission¶
When you're happy that your competition results have been finalised, click UPLOAD RESULTS.
If you have any outstanding issues or warnings, you will be asked if you want to continue.
SHOW IN WA CALENDAR will take you to the location your results will appear on the World Athletics website.
Issues and Warnings¶
Issues are shown in red at the bottom of the page, and will prevent submission of competition data to World Athletics.
Warnings are shown in yellow at the bottom of the page. They do not stop submission of all competition data to World Athletics, but data submitted will exclude any events with warnings.
If an issue or warning message you receive is not explained below, feel free to get in touch for clarification.
Common Issues¶
Competition is missing a valid World Athletics Venue
World Athletics Calendar submissions require a valid World Athletics Venue ID as part of the submission.
First make sure your competition has a venue set in OpenTrack. If the venue does not already exist, add it.
If the issue is still there after adding the OpenTrack venue, then you'll need us to add the correct World Athletics Venue ID for you, so please get in touch.
Competition date must be 30 days or more in the future
It is not possible to submit an application to the World Athletics Calendar if the competition start date is in less than 30 days' time.
Common Warnings¶
Not all events have results
This warning will appear if you have any events in your competition that are not marked as official, and exists as a safeguard against submitting to World Athletics before your meeting is finished.
Event XX is missing a World Athletics Event ID
Any event without an ID that appears in the warnings section will need you to add one before its result data can be submitted.
Comp Calendar/Results JSON¶
The expandable Competition Calendar JSON/Competition Results JSON sections contain the JSON we have built from your competition data to send to World Athletics — you can look at these if you're interested, but there's no need to do anything with them.
