Interesting. Maybe some races are easier to access in the IM website.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

From a technical standpoint, the data was previously retrieved from competitor.com using an API key you could find on any of the ironman websites source code.

They recently went to great effort to obfuscate it. I can still get to it, but so far only by doing a complete browser emulation. And they probably rate limit if you make too many requests from the same IP.

What they've done is far beyond GDPR requirements for Europe.

Then I don't fully understand the motives for this. Shutting down ObsTri doesn't help Ironman and it doesn't help the sport. I know lots of folks who used ObsTri for various reasons. Sure it was great looking at the competition for races. But other features that listed out the races easily by date and location and showed course information (weather, elevation, location) were very helpful as well. ObsTri was a website that focused exclusively on the IM branded races and many of us were "obsessed" with this neat website. Something like this was actually helpful for the brand encouraging more interest in the brand and actual race courses. It unfortunate. Shutting down ObsTri helps no one.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I don’t think it’s the EU laws, GDPR etc. This is simply IM data, they didn’t give others rights to process it. IM doesn’t want others to make money on it. In case this is indeed athletes’ data, IM might claim they protect their customers, as those didn’t give right for other third parties.

It's too bad ObsTri and IM couldn't come to some sort of agreement. Other sites like Athlinks certainly pull and use the same data. Maybe they have agreements. Just stating it's too bad as it wasn't hurting IM. Only bringing more focus and attention to the brand/races. It was basically free advertising. I know that I personally spent a lot of time on ObsTri when figuring out my race schedule for an upcoming year. It was a win for Ironman as I got excited looking at the courses and data on ObsTri.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

The motives are pretty clear IMO. Ironman publishes the results (poorly) on their site. Someone then published those results on their own site. If ObsTri made any money at all then that is money Ironman feels entitled to (even though it is public data once published).

It's like that episode of The Office when Ryan made a website (Dunder Mifflin Infinity) to sell paper, but it also had a chat room and social media stuff. It's silly, but the real idea was that they wanted to keep people on the Dunder Mifflin site to see the logo, ingrain the brand, maybe even sell some paper. Exact same thing with Ironman. Keep people on the site, ingrain the brand. I'd imagine their marketing team classifies anyone getting info on their races from a site other than their own as a loss. Growing the sport be damned, they've got shareholders who need quarterly growth.

I wouldn't be so quick to make that claim. I'm not even sure a lawyer, unless there's one who just wants to win an argument on the internet, could make that kind of claim.

Any lawyer worth his salt would give the old, it depends, how much could this cost you, how much do you want to spend, etc. etc. answer. That's why no one likes lawyers you spend a bunch of money to get told all the many ways your action or inaction could cost you a bunch of money :)

I would want nothing to do with coming anywhere close to the GDPR rules. I would want nothing to do with having to defend myself as being compliant with the GDPR rules. The process is the punishment in a big company like Ironman (small ones obviously too). So why leave yourself open to the potential of getting hammered or having to justify why what you are doing is not a violation.

I realize it's trite to say so, but it's not like Ironman can tell their lawyers that their internet searches on slowtwitch or a cursory read of the law says they'll be fine. This is why laws which abrogate freedom of press are said to have a chilling effect. It doesn't just shut down illegal speech, it shuts down speech which could be argued gets close to illegal speech. And worst case they are spending tens of thousands of dollars on internal legal research and opinions to be "it depends" level of certainity it's legal speech, that they are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court proving it's legal.

Screw that, I'm sure most CEOs who have an aversion to making a principled stand with shareholder money would say.

Just so no one thinks I'm making crap up about the GDPR, I just attempted to read a news article on a website from Europe and got this this error that wouldn't even let me SEE the website:


It seems highly likely that's an overreaction to me for a website owner to do this, but it's also likely their legal counsel advised them they didn't want to get in any kind of battle or liability situation and just decided severing the service was a better solution than engaging in compliance.

LOLz

Every website template has all the required GDPR disclaimers, cookie policies, OK buttons and such.

The operator of the above website is either a blithering idiot or didn’t bother to get European readers.

The Ironman website is available in the EU/EEA, as is (and always was) Obstri.

You can take your ideological battles, the hypotheticals and the whatifs to the Lavender Room.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Ideological battle? Huh?

I'm saying I'm not surprised if IM lawyers advised them to tighten up access to their data based on GDPR.

As aside, its annoying and dumb (the pop-ups etc). The point is not that I agree with IM or I agree with that random news site that gdpr errors you. It's that clearly some data publishers are concerned about liability regardless of what the internet thinks they ought to do. Sure, you know whats best. Show me the bond that attests you'll take the compliance and liability costs on yourself. Talks cheap.

For a long time, there were certain US-based publishers that would block EU readers (and some who currently block California based readership).

Many of us pay third-parties (like Cookiebot, who we use here) for cookie compliance. But that doesn't solve all everything.

My understanding is that it was "more" problematic to publish / process stuff *before* the race (which is effectively a customer list) versus *after* the race, which is more akin to news. You could argue this to death either way, but I can understand why IM (or any other race production company, for that matter) might choose a more conservative approach on this.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

So what was the actual intent of the GDPR? I understand the data protection idea and not wanting to give companies free reign over any little tidbits they can get their hands on, but I'm not seeing a connection to how a finisher list of a public event violates this?

Isn't any mention/form/likeness/photo of you already signed away upon entry to the event? Surely the buck stops there for personal info. It's not like they're publishing a list of everyone who signed up for a private service like AshleyMadison and that associated scandal.

My understanding is that the issue wasn't results lists. It's entry / start lists.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

This can't be overstated. IM should get a lifetime achievement award for awful websites. Over decades. To this day, if I want to look up something very simple, I seem to go in circles through what's known in the business as "angry fruit salad." (A website packed with all sorts of random sections, graphics, etc)

It's like they actually try to make it bad - a corporate goal.

Results & live results were definitively part of the problem.

Thanks for the clarification / correction.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Thanks for chiming in Christophe. What were the other parts, if you don't mind saying?

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

GDPR is irrelevant imo since we are talking about publicly available data, at least in as far as the race results go. Perhaps some asshole lawyer decided that being able to search race history by person was somehow now kosher... but in general this just sounds like Ironman doesn't want to license its 1st party data. Or obstri balked at the license fee, which could have been whatever.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Among other things, GDPR requires you to collect and use data for specific purposes, to list those purposes, AND to keep that data secure. Somehow, I imagine another website accessing your website's data API without your permission undermines the idea of secure data. It at least would make a lawyer who's job is limiting liability for your client very scared and say, "turn that off, not worth the risk".

We are talking 1st party. Accessing API without permission is a violation of EULA.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

+1000

Even getting your own results is awful. When logged in you can go to your profile and see your race history. Bib #, Race, AG, Overall time and AWA points, that's it. No splits, no AG placing, no link to results. Thanks for the bib number though, that's helpful!

Agree as well. The app is a joke and takes forever to do research on athletes or previous years performances. I’ve used a website called endurance-data for the past couple years. It makes it easy to search up athletes previous results and placement in races.

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Mission Kona Podcast
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2568182
Kona 2024 Qualifier

One of the stipulations of GDPR is "The right to be forgotten". https://gdpr.eu/...otten/?cn-reloaded=1

I.e. if I want remove the right to use my personal data from someone I have previously given it to, they need to comply (within given circumstances). If I reach out to Ironman and ask them to forget me, they generally need to pull my data. This includes race results. If they have provided a third party this data they need to ensure this is also deleted. If that third party does not, Ironman is at fault. This makes data owners hesitant to let others have and use that data, as it gets tricky to live up to your GDPR obligations over time.

As far as I can remember, Ironman did not give Obstri some sort of permission and then pull it.

Christophe built his site, at some point made Ironman aware of it, and Ironman responded by demanding he take it down.

At least that’s the gist of it.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

That seems like a train wreck waiting to happen. There is so many automated caching websites that do nothing but pull info from other sites. Local 5ks publish their results to RunSignUp or something like that, and they get cached by Athlinks, but also the local newspaper usually has a write up including the winner's names, along with Facebook/Instagram/Twitter posts about the race. Does the right to be forgotten fall on everyone who published the data, or just the original publisher?

Having the responsibility fall solely on the original publisher is (IMO) insanity. By publishing something you disseminate information to the masses. In a perfect world everybody would cite your original info, but that's simply not the way the world works. A google search of Ironman (Event) Results (Year) brings up pages and pages of results lists. Does a person who wishes to be forgotten need to reach out only to Ironman, or to each of these hundreds of websites individually?