In the long run: Marathon Photos

Marathon photos make their way online faster due to high-speed internet connections. Photo / Dean Purcell

While most of the country is waiting for the Government's ultra-fast broadband plan to deliver optical fibre to the door, Hamilton company Marathon Photos has had it for years.

"Fibre optics changed our world," says Francis Kay, a former newspaper photographer who began the business in 1999. "It meant we could expand."

And expand it has. From its first event that year, Auckland's Sky Tower Challenge, Marathon Photos will this year cover 450 running, cycling, triathlon and ski events in 30 countries, photographing 2 million people.

Kay was interviewed for this story the day after the Marathon de Quebec, in Montreal, before departing for the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow.

He never imagined the business, which he owns with wife Alison, would grow as it has. It was the first service anywhere in the world that photographed running events, publishing the images on the internet for runners to buy.

"When I first came up with the idea I did wonder how I would get it out there and at some of the early races they just didn't understand the concept of putting photos on the internet," says Kay. "But what I did was travel overseas and start knocking on doors - just being in the face of event organisers, in a nice way."

Initially, Kay's photographers used film, and pictures were scanned and uploaded to the internet. But in 2003 they moved to digital cameras.

"We started taking more photos per event because you didn't have to reload your camera after every 36 frames. We now have photographers who take 10,000 photos at one event."

The service has also expanded to include video, with participants able to buy clips of themselves during and finishing events.

The resulting explosion in digital content means Marathon Photos relies heavily on IT systems and high-speed data connections. Of its 12 fulltime staff, five are programmers who maintain the software that automates the handling of images and video recorded by about 750 contract photographers.

Until an optical fibre connection became available, Kay says the company relied on a "frustratingly slow" ADSL connection of the type most residential broadband subscribers have.

That meant photos taken on a Sunday weren't available online until Wednesday. With fibre, the 230,000 images from Sydney's City2Surf event on August 8 were online the following morning.

"The philosophy when I started was that we would try to be the best in every part of the business," says Kay.

Needless to say, it extends to broadband.

"That strategy has worked for us because we have lost very few events and we keep gaining new ones."