Why the next edition is planned before anyone reads the last one

I have run enough races to know how they end. Not one asked me anything.

For a long time I thought that was disinterest. Then I asked an organiser how they collected participant feedback. The answer was: we do not ask, we are already thinking about the next one.

That is the honest answer, and that is where the problem sits. The next edition starts taking shape before anyone has read the last one. Registration opens, numbers come in below last year, and there is no way to know whether it was the course, the aid stations, the price, or none of it. You are left with the same twenty complaints and whatever you heard at the finish line.

I spent fifteen years building retail systems where that question gets answered. When a customer does not return, you know at which step they dropped off. In sport, we still answer from memory.

Nobody is going to stop thinking about the next one. Sporting Scouter was built to fit that: a short read of what people said, what came up most and where to start, before the next edition is closed.