Race Mango

Race Mango is the only platform in Croatia where you can search for races on a map. A list tells you a race exists; a map tells you how far away it is: what's nearby, what you can get to without losing a whole day, what falls in the week you're heading to the coast anyway. Filters narrow it down by sport, race type, date and course length, and they're built to work with the map rather than replace it.

The calendar isn't only for runners either. Alongside running, cycling, swimming, triathlon, canicross and OCR (obstacle course racing) there's Nordic walking, hiking, plus wine-and-walk tours and food-focused races that pair moving with the local kitchen.

Most race platforms only live around registration. You show up, look around, sign up, and don't come back until something catches your eye again. That isn't the user's fault. Nothing on the platform gives them a reason to return in between.

So the dashboard was built the other way around, starting from a personalised calendar that keeps all your races in one place. The wishlist is for the ones you're still thinking about, the ones that sound like a great idea in March for something happening in September. The "going" list is for the ones you're actually doing. A countdown reminds you how long is left to the next start, your results history fills up on its own, and virtual races give you something to log when the calendar is completely empty. Small things, but together they're a reason to open the platform in a week with no race in it.

An organiser can publish a race themselves as soon as the date is set. Registrations run through an integrated form, and the platform tracks capacity, payment status and participant statistics by gender, age group and country, down to T-shirt sizes and meal choices. After the race come results and a gallery with photos and video.

The system adapts and grows with the organiser, because no two races need the same things, or have the same number of people running them.

Timing runs straight off a phone, tablet or laptop. Volunteers are placed at checkpoints, training takes a few minutes, and times are recorded with a button press or by typing in a bib number. Everything syncs to the database in real time, so the organiser sees the whole race from one screen and results can go out live to spectators. For chip-timed races the system still works with external timing teams through start list export and results import.

The latest addition is Map Heist, a territory game built into the platform. Every uploaded run, ride, walk or hike paints hexagonal tiles on a real map, and players compete in Croatian and European leagues to see who can claim the most ground.

A few systems keep the game alive: fog of war, so unexplored ground is worth exploring; seasons, so nobody's early lead lasts forever; badges and mountain peak trophies for the routes worth a detour; and a daily yield from held tiles, which rewards turning up regularly rather than one big day out.

Map Heist asks a sports platform to behave like a game, and asks athletes to change nothing about how they train.

We wrote four feature articles about the platform for Magazin Trčanje. They introduced Race Mango to a wider audience, explained what the platform does and why it exists, and reached readers who don't follow brands on Instagram.

Writing for a magazine is a different job from writing for feeds. The text has to earn the page rather than just interrupt a scroll, so it starts from something genuinely useful to a runner and lets the platform follow.