And the season started at full speed. Up in Dalarna - Sweden, skiers from all over Europe arrived as usual to ski the 90k from Sälen to Mora. And just like every year mika:timing was at site and worked day and night to provide the skiers with their results. What if we knew by then that this was our last event in many months…

Because then it suddenly stopped. Covid-19 went from being a diffuse virus on the other side of the planet to becoming a part of everyones life. The rest we are all well too familiar with.

After landing in the new situation, we at mika: timing have joined forces and continued to do what we are best at. 2020 has been a year of new thinking, innovation and a desire to find new solutions to be able to exercise and compete in a safe way.

A new world of virtual events has opened up. Run or bike wherever you are but compete against your friends and enjoy the race feeling. With our customers, we have developed clever solutions and further developed our tracking app. Participants have been able to run races and take part of audio experiences, follow their progress on the race's original map while friends have been able to get live updates on the progress. We have had joint warm-ups but with participants spread all over the world. Together we have made it possible to run races in a safe way. During the summer and autumn, tens of thousands of people have run and cycled virtual races such as Midnattsloppet, Ride London, Hemmavasan, Stockholm Marathon, Tjejmilen, Cologne Marathon and many more.

During the autumn, we have also had the opportunity to travel out in the world and do real races again. No matter how much it poured down in London, we were eternally grateful to finally be at site when we timed the runners at London Marathon's elite event. And in October we were on Gotland and delivered timekeeping for 2000 enduro riders at Gotland Grand National. Even better is that the event was carried out in a safe manner and afterwards no corona cases related to the race have been found. Something that other studies also have proved. It is not exercise races that are the danger of the spread of infection.

As previously mentioned, 2020 has been a year for innovation and the latest example of this is something we call TACT (Transponder Assisted Contact Tracing). By using the same reliable hardware that we use for timing at some of the worlds most iconic sport events we can now offer a safer way to host mass participation events. Control the flow of people, set the number of persons that are allowed to be in the area and - if worse comes to worst – trace all potential contacts. It is also very easy to setup, the small passive trackboxes makes the installation both smooth and flexible.

A summary of this year naturally means a lot of focus on the corona. But now it's time to look ahead and we do so with confidence. 2021 will most likely be a year with new challenges and we will have to accept that it will be a transition period towards the ”new normal”. mika:timing have always worked closely with our partners in order to make better events, and in this situation it is even more important. We understand the difficulties faced when organizing an event and together we can find ways to overcome these. We will do so by being more flexible, by being more creative and to come up with smart solutions from outside the box. Because we are also convinced that 2021 will offer lots of exciting experiences. And one thing we can guarantee, mika:timing will still be at the forefront when it comes to delivering solutions to sport events.

And now that we have the chance to reflect a little, we realize even more how privileged we are to be a part of this fantastic industry. Stay healthy and see you soon on the ski track, on the run course or in the finish area after we have reached the next goal together!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!