Club trainings
Run club-wide training races with BENZING Live arrivals - how members connect their private trainings, how the on-the-fly leaderboard is built, and what the privacy switch controls.
Good to know before you start
- You only need to be a member of a Smart Club - you do not have to be the club administrator. Any member with at least one BENZING Live training can spin up a club training race and invite the other members.
- A training has to have GPS coordinates before it can drive a club training race. The map button or the "locate me" shortcut on your training is enough.
- Each fancier controls whether their trainings are visible to clubmates through a single switch in the fancier settings. The switch only affects the club training screens - it never hides arrivals from yourself or your loft administrator.
What a club training race is
Club trainings turn the private BENZING Live trainings of several fanciers into a single shared race - with one liberation point, one release time, and one combined leaderboard. The whole flow runs from inside MyPigeons; nothing extra has to be installed.
A club training race is a lightweight race object that lives inside a Smart Club. It carries one liberation point, one release date and time, and an "on the fly" leaderboard that stitches together the arrivals of every connected fancier in real time.
Behind the scenes the platform reuses the regular race plumbing (the same on-the-fly board that BENZING Live private flights use), but the race itself is marked as private to the Smart Club and limited to training arrivals. It will never show up in public season standings.
Each connected training keeps its own arrivals, its own clock, and its own loft. The club training race only acts as the shared frame - the liberation coordinates, the release time, and the calculated speed for every connected pigeon use that frame.
Who can do what
Three roles are involved. The same person often plays more than one of them.
Smart Club member
Anyone with an accepted Smart Club invite can create club training races, connect their own private trainings, and invite the trainings of other members. No admin role is needed.
Smart Club administrator
In addition to everything a member can do, an administrator can sync release coordinates and time across all connected trainings (Race administration → Race management) and edit the underlying club race the same way as any other private race.
Loft owner of the connected training
Owns the BENZING Live arrivals that feed the leaderboard. They can disconnect their own training at any time - that restores the original liberation point and release time the training had before it was connected.
A private training cannot be connected to a club race owned by a Smart Club the fancier is not a member of. The platform checks the membership on every connect call, both for self-connect and when one member invites another member's training.
Before you start
Three things have to be true before the club training screens become useful.
BENZING Live equipment
A BENZING Live device on the loft, paired with your loft inside the SmartLoft section of MyPigeons via your Live ID. The Live ID is what tells MyPigeons which arrivals belong to which loft, so without it the device's arrivals never reach a training.
Smart Club membership
You need an accepted invite into at least one Smart Club. Smart Clubs are a separate organisation type - members can belong to several at once, in addition to their normal federation club. The Organisation structure guide covers how Smart Clubs differ from base organisations.
A training with GPS coordinates
The training has to have a liberation point set - either by picking it on the map, by using the "locate me" button, or by loading the coordinates from a previous training. Without coordinates the Create tab is greyed out and shows a warning.
Where to find it
The whole feature lives on the training management page. From the left menu open My Loft → Trainings, pick a training, and switch to the Management tab. The right column holds the Club Training Races card with three sub-tabs: My training, My Clubmates, and Create.
The card only shows up when you are signed into a fancier that has at least one accepted Smart Club membership. Members of pure federation clubs without a Smart Club will not see it.
The three tabs explained
My training
Lists every club training race in your Smart Clubs for the current season. The race your training is connected to is highlighted in green; the closest match by date is highlighted in blue (it is the suggestion to connect to). Use the Connect / Disconnect button on the right to change the connection.
Connecting locks the release date, time, distance, and coordinates on your training - they now come from the club race. Disconnecting restores the original values that were in place before the connection was made.
The card-overview screenshot above shows this tab in the disconnected state with the best-match (blue) suggestion. Once you connect, the chosen row turns green and the button becomes Disconnect.
My Clubmates
Pick one of the existing club training races at the top, then see every Smart Club member with a training that falls within the chosen date window (default ±2 days). For each member you can connect their training to the chosen race directly from this screen, the same way you would from inside their training - so the founder of the club training race can wire up everyone in a few clicks.
Members who turned on the privacy switch show up here too, but their trainings are hidden behind a lock icon. Their trainings cannot be connected from this screen until they turn the switch back off.
Create
Pick the Smart Club to host the race, give it a name and a date, and the platform creates the club training race and (by default) connects your current training to it as the seed. The seed training's coordinates and release time are reused as the starting frame of the new race.
The Create tab is greyed out until your training has GPS coordinates. The platform also warns you if a club training race with the same name and date already exists in the chosen Smart Club, so you do not accidentally create a duplicate.
Connecting your own training
Use this flow when somebody else in the club already created the club training race and you want to add your loft to it.
Open the training in the management view
My Loft → Trainings → pick the training → Management. The Club Training Races card sits in the right column.
Find the race in My training
The list shows every club training race in your Smart Clubs for the current season. The race that best matches your training's release date is highlighted in blue.
Hit Connect
Once connected, the row turns green and your training's release date, time, distance, and coordinates start coming from the club race. The release fields on the left card become read-only with a small chain icon next to the distance label.
Use Disconnect to leave
Disconnecting reverts your training to the values it had right before the connection. A training can only be connected to one club race at a time; to switch to a different race, disconnect first.
Safety net: connecting takes a snapshot
The moment you connect a training, the platform stores a private snapshot of its training name, release time, release coordinates, and release distance as they were just before the connection.
When you (or anyone with permission) disconnect later, the snapshot is replayed back onto the training and arrival speeds are recalculated against those original values. So if you connect to the wrong race by mistake, just disconnect - nothing about your training is lost.
Creating a new club training race
Use this flow when nobody in the club has created the race yet. The training you start from becomes the seed: its liberation coordinates and release time become the starting values for the new club race, so subsequent connections inherit them.
Make sure your training has GPS coordinates
The Create tab is locked until coordinates are set. Open the GPS Settings section on the left card and either pick the point on the map or use Locate me.
Open the Create tab
Right-column card → Create. Pick the Smart Club from the dropdown, type a race name (the training name is pre-filled as a suggestion) and pick the date.
Optional: leave "Connect this training after creation" ticked
With it ticked the platform creates the race and immediately connects your training to it. Untick it if you only want to set up the race for someone else.
Hit Create Race
The new race shows up in the My training tab. From there you can either invite individual members from the My Clubmates tab, or just let other members find and connect themselves.
Inviting clubmates from My Clubmates
The My Clubmates tab is the fastest way to wire up several lofts at once - useful for the person who created the club training race.
Pick the club training race from the dropdown
The list refreshes to show every Smart Club member with a private training inside the chosen date window. The default window is ±2 days; widen it with the small selector next to the dropdown if a member trained on a different day.
Connect a member's training
Each member appears once, with their candidate trainings listed underneath. Hit Connect next to the training you want to link in. The Best match badge highlights the closest training by date so you do not have to think.
The My Clubmates screenshot in the previous section shows both steps: the date-window selector at the top and the green Connect buttons on candidate trainings (with the Best match badge highlighting the closest fit).
A member can only have one of their trainings connected to the same club race at a time. Once one of their trainings is connected, the other Connect buttons for that member are disabled until you disconnect the existing one.
Members with the privacy switch turned on
They still appear in the list (so you know they exist) but every one of their trainings is hidden behind a lock icon. The screen shows a one-line note explaining why and the Connect button is not offered. Ask the member to turn the switch off if you want to include them.
The training privacy switch
Every fancier owns one switch that controls whether their private trainings are visible inside club training screens of other members. It does not affect any other part of the platform.
Where to find it
Fancier database → open the fancier → Settings → Training privacy card. Flip Hide my trainings from club members on or off and the change takes effect immediately.
What it changes
When the switch is on, your trainings disappear from the My Clubmates tab of every other member - your name still shows up so the rest of the club knows you are around, but your trainings are replaced with a lock icon and the rest of the club cannot connect them on your behalf.
When the switch is off (default), members of every Smart Club you belong to can see your training names, dates, and arrival counts inside the My Clubmates tab. They still cannot edit anything - only Connect / Disconnect.
What it does not change
It does not hide your training from yourself, from your loft administrator, or from your federation results. It does not unpublish trainings you marked as Public using the publish switch on the training itself.
It does not retroactively disconnect trainings that are already connected to a club race - those stay connected until you disconnect them manually.
The on-the-fly leaderboard
Every BENZING Live arrival reported on a connected training is recalculated against the club race's liberation coordinates and release time and pushed into a single shared leaderboard. The leaderboard sits at Results → On the fly → r-<id>-<slug>/by-pigeons for every member of the Smart Club, plus the loft administrator.
The board sorts by speed and updates in close to real time as new arrivals arrive. Each row shows the pigeon, the loft, the speed, and the arrival time on the loft's clock.
Disconnecting a training removes its arrivals from the leaderboard immediately. Reconnecting puts them back.
Public vs. private club training race
Independently of the per-fancier privacy switch, the club training race itself has a public / private flag. It controls who can open the on-the-fly leaderboard URL.
Private by default
A newly created club training race is private. Only members of the host Smart Club (and the Smart Club administrators) can open the leaderboard, even if they get the link forwarded.
Switching to public
When the Smart Club administrator switches the race to public, the leaderboard URL becomes openable by anyone with the link - no login or club membership required. This is the right setting when you want to share the live results with spectators or post them on a club website.
Admin-only toggle
The public / private switch lives on the club training race administration page (Race management) and is visible only to Smart Club administrators. Regular club members do not see it - they can only connect their trainings.
Switching from public back to private revokes external access immediately. Visitors who already have the page open will be locked out on their next refresh.
Race management for Smart Club administrators
Smart Club administrators get one extra power: they can edit the club training race directly. The new release coordinates and time are pushed automatically to every connected training as soon as the changes are saved.
Pick the organisation that hosts the race, open the race itself, and switch to Administration → Race management. Edit the liberation point, the release time, the race name, or any other field, then hit Save Changes. The platform syncs the new values down to every connected training in the background and recalculates each loft's arrival speeds against the new frame.
Editing the race itself is the only operation reserved to administrators. Members can connect, disconnect, and create races on their own - they just cannot rewrite values that already affect other people's trainings.
Common questions
Can I connect the same training to several club races?
No. A training is only ever connected to one club race at a time. Use Disconnect first if you want to move it.
I deleted my training - what happens to the club race?
The club race stays alive and keeps the arrivals of the other connected trainings. Your arrivals disappear from the leaderboard with the training.
I changed my mind about the release time after connecting - can I still edit it?
Not on your own training while it stays connected - the release fields are locked. Disconnecting, editing, and reconnecting will not help either: the moment you reconnect, the platform syncs your training back to the club race's liberation point and release time, so any local edits get overwritten. The only place where the release time of a connected training can actually be changed is the club race itself, and that is reserved to the Smart Club administrator (Race management → edit → Save Changes).
Does the public publish switch on the training affect club trainings?
No. The publish switch generates the public spectator URL of your training. The club training screens use a separate visibility model based on Smart Club membership and the privacy switch.
