Following an event on Aster is meant to be effortless. For public and unlisted events you don't need an account, an app, or any setup — just open the link. Spectating is free and stays free; it's how the sport reaches the people waiting at home.
How to watch
- Open the event link (shared with you, or found under Events). It works in any browser, including a private/incognito window.
- The event page opens on the About tab — description, route and organiser, with a one-line strip showing the date, distance, type and location at a glance. When the event is live, a Watch live button takes you straight to the map.
- Switch to the Map tab for the live picture: every active athlete's marker, the route line, and the trails they've left behind.
- Switch to the Riders tab for live progress — standings and gaps for races and time trials, times and "on course / finished" for sportives and point-to-point events. Meet-ups don't have a Riders tab — see Reading the leaderboard for why.
- Tap any athlete to focus on them and see their trail and stats. Tapping also adds them to your favourites for this event (no account needed).
Missed the start, or want to see how a move played out? Tap Catch up to rewind and watch the race from earlier, using the playback controls (play/pause, scrub, and a speed like 2×). Tap View live to jump straight back to now. Catch up works on any live event.
No sign-in prompt will appear. If you ever hit one while watching a public event, that's a bug on our side — watching is meant to be open. Please tell us.
What you can see without an account
- The live map and every athlete's marker
- Each athlete's trail (the path they've covered)
- The route line, start/finish and checkpoints where the event uses them
- The route file (GPX) to download, from the About tab
- The live Riders list — standings and gaps where the format publishes them, times otherwise (meet-ups don't have this list — the map is the live picture)
- Side-by-side rider comparison, on every format that has a Riders list
- The event Feed — organiser announcements and posts
See the detail in Reading the live map and trails and Reading the leaderboard.
What needs an account
Anything that's tied to you needs signing in:
- Following an event or athlete to get notifications
- Posting, commenting or reacting on the feed
- Registering to take part
See Following riders and getting notified.
After the event
- Results are published on the event page (marked provisional until the organiser makes them official). Meet-ups don't publish results — they're untimed, so there's nothing to rank.
- Once the event finishes, a Watch replay button plays back how the whole field moved around the course — meet-ups included. While the event is still live the replay isn't ready yet — watch it on the live map, and the replay will be there once it finishes.
Private and members-only events
Two kinds of event are the exception to open watching:
- Private events require signing in, and the live action is visible to the people in the event (participants and event staff).
- Members events belong to a club and are visible only to signed-in club members.
See Public, unlisted, private and members events.
Good to know
- Positions update live as athletes send them. If someone is in a no-signal area, their marker pauses and then catches up when they reconnect.
- When an athlete finishes, their result locks in everywhere — it won't drift around afterwards, even if their phone keeps moving. On the live map specifically, their marker holds at the line, then fades out over a couple of seconds and is removed: the live map is for who's still on course. Their frozen result stays on the leaderboard, in compare, in the results and in the replay.
- Occasionally an athlete may be missing from the public map: on events where the organiser allows it, individuals can choose to hide their live location from public view. They're still tracked, but a hidden athlete is left out of every public surface — not just the map, but the Riders tab, compare and the published results too. Event staff still see them everywhere.