At first we were trying to figure out if the racers had actually run through the finish line or if someone had turned off the RFID module on the device. Unfortunately, there was no camera installed at the finish line and since they were the last ones, no one really addressed it. I then inquired if there was a large crowd of people in the finish area (finish gate) that could make it difficult or even possibly impossible (I’ve had this situation when using triathlon chips) to record the chip. This also supposedly did not occur. So we looked at the chip records and the listed racers or their chips were correctly recorded – i.e. they were not just reflected in the race results.
In the end, the solution was simple. The race definition was set too early in the race end time. After setting the correct race end time, the last three racers appeared in the results.
The end time (planned and actual) is an optional entry in the race definition and, along with the race start time, determines what entries (from the chip entries) are processed into the results for that race. The race finish time therefore limits the amount of data that needs to be processed to evaluate a given race. Of course, this is of greater importance only if there are subsequent chip records in the database – for example from a subsequent race.