Issing taking media members through the brand’s long relationship with Olympic Games.
JUST how much work is involved in being the official timekeeper at the Olympics?
Omega Malaysia vice-president Martin Issing tells us members of the Malaysian media over lunch – at a cosy French restaurant in a corner of Kuala Lumpur city – about the gargantuan responsibility entrusted to the Swiss brand.
The 2024 Games in Paris, starting end of July, will be Omega’s 31st time as official timekeeper since its inaugural appointment in 1932 for the Los Angeles Olympics.
Omega has taken timekeeping for the world’s biggest sporting event from simple chronograph stopwatches to the most state-of-the-art technology in the world.
An image from Omega’s promotional campaign for Olympics 2024.
As Nayla Hayek, who is chair of the Swatch Group (which Omega is part of) board of directors, states: “When the difference between gold and silver can be measured in a thousandth of a second, precision is vital and results must be unquestionable.”
The extension of agreement between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Omega through to 2032 shows the trust the latter has earned in its role.
IOC president Thomas Bach notes that 2032 is an important milestone, as “it will mark 100 years since the Olympic movement was first able to count on Omega’s timekeeping solutions.”
The 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games was the first time that a single watch company had been selected as the Official Timekeeper.
A photofinish image by Olympics Official Timekeeper, Omega.
According to Issing, timekeepers at the Olympic Games before 1932 had used their own pocket watches and were assigned individually to time the athletes; consequently there would be cases such as a sprinter who crossed the finishing line in third place had the best time, thus raising the question of whether the result should be based on the athlete whom everyone saw arrived at the line first or the time that was clocked.
To eliminate that problematic situation, Omega brought 30 stopwatches to its first Games as Official Timekeeper, where 117 events were participated by 37 nations.
Each stopwatch had been certified as a chronometer by the Observatory at Neuchâtel and was accurate to the nearest 1/10th of a second. Most impressive was the split-second function that allowed intermediate times to also be recorded.
Over the decades, the brand had developed not only the technology to capture the data with ever-increasing accuracy in the common sport events, it had to also devise measuring equipment for new sports introduced in the Olympics as well as consider the route of an outdoor sport and weather conditions like extreme cold that could affect the timekeeping equipment’s performance.
Omega’s workshop preparing stopwatches to keep time for all sports at the Olympics in its early days as the Games’ official timekeeper.
The Official Timekeeper also had to prepare the accompanying equipment such as the scoreboards for stadium spectators and display of results for viewers elsewhere.
Among the milestones are Photoelectric Cell that replaced the traditional finish line tape with a highly reactive beam of light; quartz-driven time recorder which is Omega’s electronic chronograph featuring a high-speed printing device able to time events and instantly print out the results to the nearest 1/100th of a second; and Swim Eight-O-Matic that was the world’s first semi-automatic swimming timer and was accurate to 1/1000th of a second.
At the 2012 London Games, Omega’s new Quantum Timer – with an enhanced resolution of one millionth of a second – was used specifically in track cycling, while a similar Quantum Aquatics Timer débuted in swimming.
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which was postponed for a full year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, took place without crowds but it was Omega’s biggest ever Olympic Games operation so far.
There were 530 timekeepers, 400 tonnes of equipment and 1,300,000 results measured.
An image from Omega’s promotional campaign for Olympics 2024 in Paris.
In Paris, which will see 329 Olympic events across 32 sports, Omega will measure the results using the next generation of photofinish camera and provide in-depth data collection that will show exactly how each event is won or lost.
Preceding the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the French capital, Omega has unveiled a visually compelling campaign that transformed Paris into a playground, where the most recognisable city sights have become a stage for sporting glory.
The 12 athletes featured in the campaign are Onega ambassadors, whose selection covers a diverse range of countries, sports and abilities.
