For anyone who has ever spent an hour shuffling through each division, filtering out ride times for your team to transfer onto the omnipresent white board that we all use at shows, this app is for you. Thanks to the developing prowess of Vince Oppedisano, event riders now have a new tool to use for ride time organization: an app called Ride On Time.
The idea was borne from Vince’s wife, Stacie, who rides with Marc Grandia in Washington. “This would have been summer of 2015 or so when the idea came about,” Vince said. “I thought the whole white board idea was so archaic, and Stacie thought that there had to be a way to create an app to streamline the process. It was chaotic when everyone had to use the board and no one had an idea who had to be at what time.”
Vince is a software developer, so naturally the project fell in his lap as a side project. But he took the idea and ran with it, and from that idea Ride On Time was created.
The user interface of Ride On Time is very sleek and simple. Simply pull up the app (at this time, a Facebook account is required to log in) and view the schedule of events. You can then select the event you’ll be at, and then either search for a specific rider or browse each division and select riders that way.
Once you have selected your rider, click “Add to Schedule” and watch the Schedule tab of your app fill in with ride times that are in chronological order and color coded by phase.
To add even more detail and customization, you can also select times for tacking up and warming up, which is perfect for both grooms who are busy getting horses ready and coaches who need to know when to meet their next student at warm up. You can ask the app to send you notifications at each selected time.
For teams, this app is also great because you can share the schedule you’ve built with others. That way all of your riders and team members (which includes parents, friends, spouses, etc.) can stay on track and not have to build their own schedule. It’s a win-win for the organized eventer!
So far, Vince has had great feedback for his efforts. At this time, there is no Android version of Ride On Time available, but it is in development with an anticipated launch in the coming months. Vince is also looking ahead to possibly integrating scores and other customization options within the app.
“It’s been really fun for me to develop,” he said. “This is (my wife’s) world, not mine, but it’s been very educational and getting the feedback and the people reaching out to say thank you has made everything worthwhile.”
Ride On Time integrates data from Start Box Scoring; at this time, there is no integration with Event Entries because of the difficulty to compile data. Given that many ride times for events using Event Entries are separately hosted on the individual event’s website, this presents an obstacle.
We’re thrilled with the efforts that Vince and Stacie have made to make event organization even easier for riders and coaches, and we look forward to seeing what else is coming down the pipe. Here’s to making the OCD eventer in all of us very, very happy!
To download your own copy of Ride On Time Equestrian and get started, click here.
