Live positions
Each athlete is a coloured marker at their latest known position. Markers move in near real time as athletes send their location. Tap a marker (or a name in the list) to focus on that athlete — the map follows them and their stats appear.
A paused athlete's marker stays on the map — they're still out on course, just stopped. On races and time trials, markers appear once athletes are under way; on sportives, they appear from the moment an athlete arms their tracking, so you can watch someone roll to the start.
Taming a busy map
On big events the map can be a wall of markers. Two tools help:
- Star your favourites. Tap the star next to any athlete to add them to your favourites for this event. Tapping a rider's row anywhere in the list also adds them — a quick tap to keep an eye on one rider. (To remove one, tap its star again.) Stars work without an account — they're remembered on your device — and they drive the ★ favourites filter on the list and the map.
- All riders / Top 10 toggle. Switch the map from everyone to just the leaders plus your starred favourites.
- Category chips. Hide or show whole categories at once. The chips are shared with the Riders list, so the markers and the list always match.
You can also filter the list by team or name search.
Trails
A trail is the line showing where an athlete has been. It's drawn from the GPS points their phone has recorded, and it grows as they go.
Why trails sometimes have gaps
If an athlete loses phone signal, their points can't upload until they reconnect, so the trail shows a break and then resumes. A gap simply means "no live data through here" — usually a dead zone. When their phone catches up, the missing section fills in.
A break also appears wherever an athlete paused and moved before resuming — that's an accurate picture, not an error. Aster never draws a straight line between two places an athlete didn't actually travel between.
Live updates
- Positions stream live while you have the page open. If your own connection drops, the map reconnects and catches up — the marker snaps to the current position rather than replaying the gap.
- On very long events the trail you see on the map is the most recent stretch of riding; the athlete's full track is always preserved in their saved ride.
Catch up: rewind a live race
Want to see how a move played out, or catch a start you missed? On any live event, tap Catch up to rewind and watch the race from earlier, with playback controls — play/pause, scrub the timeline, and a speed like 2×. When you're done, tap View live to jump straight back to now. It's the same event, just wound back — the markers, trails and standings all replay together.
Finished athletes freeze
The moment an athlete's activity ends — crossing the line, hitting a cutoff, or ending early — their result freezes everywhere. (Ending early is a DNF on every format except a meet-up: Abandon on a race or time trial, slide-to-end on a sportive or point-to-point — only a meet-up always records Finished instead. See Reading the leaderboard.) Their time, distance and trail lock in at that moment, and even if their phone keeps sending points afterwards (driving home, for example), those are ignored.
On the live map specifically, a finished rider's marker holds at the line, then fades out over about 2.5 seconds and is removed. The live map is for who's still on course, so it clears riders as they finish. Their frozen result doesn't disappear — it stays on the leaderboard, the Riders tab, compare and the results. A meet-up has none of those — no Riders tab, no results (see Reading the leaderboard) — but its marker still fades and clears from the live map the same way, and the ride still shows up in the event's replay afterwards. See Why your distance and time are accurate.