How race photo search works, and is it private?

Selfie search sounds almost too simple: you upload one photo of your face, and seconds later you are looking at every photo of yourself from a race with thousands of runners. Here is what is actually happening under the hood, how it compares to the old bib-number method, and, because it is a fair question, exactly what happens to your face data afterwards.

How it works, step by step

1. You upload one selfie on the event’s photo page. A clear, front-on photo works best.
2. The system creates a face embedding, which is a mathematical representation of your facial geometry, not a stored picture. It does the same for the faces in the event’s race photos.
3. It compares your embedding to the event’s photos and returns the frames where your face matches, across every camera position on the course.
4. Your selfie is deleted within 60 seconds of matching. You are left with your photos; the platform is not left with your selfie.

Why it beats searching by bib number

For decades the only way to find race photos was by bib number, which depends on a camera and a human clearly reading the number on your chest. That fails constantly: bibs get turned, folded, soaked, pinned under jackets, blocked by other runners, or simply misread. Every one of those is a photo of you that bib search will never show you. Because selfie search matches on your face, it finds those frames too, and it pulls together every position you passed rather than only the ones where your number happened to be legible. The wider bib-free playbook is in how to find your race photos without a bib number.

Is it private? What happens to your face data

This is the part people rightly want to understand. Face matching uses biometric data, and in the United States that is regulated in several states, including Illinois (BIPA), Texas (CUBI), and Washington (RCW 19.375). A responsible platform treats it carefully. On PodiumBase specifically:

• Your selfie is permanently deleted within 60 seconds of matching.
• Face data is scoped to a single event’s collection; faces are not cross-matched between events.
• You can opt out of face matching at any time.
• A state-aware posture governs where and how the selfie feature is offered, per the laws above.

The full, plain-language policy, including the exact retention schedule and your rights, is on our trust & safety page and the biometric processing FAQ.

How accurate is it, really?

Modern face matching is strong, and in practice it reliably returns the frames you appear in even through the messy reality of racing: mid-stride, sweaty, sunglasses on, partially turned. Its one honest limit is that it needs a clear enough view of your face in a given frame. If your face is fully hidden in a shot, that shot may not come back, but a number-based search would have missed it too. It does not invent matches.

The bottom line

Selfie search turns a slow scroll through tens of thousands of photos into a few seconds of looking at your own. It works by matching your face, not your bib, which is why it finds far more of you, and on a well-run platform your selfie is gone within a minute of doing its job. Find my race photos to see it on your event.