At first glance, swimming management and sports climbing speed might not seem to have anything in common.
However, there is a device that can be found only in the swimming lanes and climbing walls of Olympic venues. It’s a touch pad.
In these two sports, no referee or machine measures the time for you. The athletes themselves have to tap the touchpad.
“Speed climbing is the second sport, after swimming, where the athlete stops the clock himself,” explained Alain Zobrist, CEO of OmegaTiming, on Saturday near Place de la Concorde in Paris, France.
After all, being the first to reach the target is the essence of both sports.
The difference is that swim management travels horizontally across the water, while sports climbing speed travels vertically against gravity.
In this respect, some of the most dramatic moments in the history of swimming management could one day be recreated in sport climbing speed as déjà vu.
Unlike swimming, which has a long and storied history, sport climbing was first included in the Olympic program at Tokyo 2020. This is the first time the sport has had a separate speed division.
When Zobrist was asked to name a moment when Omega’s timekeeper role shone through, he recalled “swimming legend” Michael Phelps (USA) winning the 100-meter men’s butterfly at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Phelps clocked 50.58 seconds to beat Milorad Kavic (Serbia) by 0.01 seconds and win his seventh gold medal of the Games.
With the naked eye, it was hard to tell who touched the touchpad first, and the Serbian swim team even disputed the result.
But in front of Omega’s state-of-the-art touchpad, which only stops time when pressure is applied, the Serbian team was forced to concede.
“It was a moment that proved how important Omega is,” said Zobrist, adding, ”Without Omega’s precise technology, the controversy surrounding the match would have been much more controversial.”
Now, 16 years later, Omega is more than just a timekeeper.
It’s not only keeping time, but also converting, analyzing, and visualizing data from the games.
For Paris 2024, Omega introduced artificial intelligence (AI)-powered ‘computer vision’. This is a technology that tracks athletes’ movements in real time and recreates them in three dimensions (3D).
For example, in gymnastics, the angle of an athlete’s foot will be measured down to the last detail, and in tennis, it will be possible to analyze the correlation between the speed of a serve and whether a match is won or lost.
“Measuring time more accurately and understanding what happened during that time better, both of which are what Omega is all about,” Zobrist said. 안전놀이터