Tribune News Network
Doha
OMEGA has continued to be a leader in sports timekeeping, using its unparalleled experience to measure times and distances that separate the winner from the runners-up in sporting competitions around the world.
OMEGA has always been committed to athletics timing and continuously develops the technology it uses to deliver flawless results. OMEGA is responsible for timing some of the most important athletic competitions in the world including the Diamond League meetings and, of course, the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
At these and other international athletics competitions, no one knows with certainty which nations’ athletes will be standing on the medal podiums but they can be sure of one thing: their championship, often record-breaking, results will have been timed and measured by OMEGA.
Since 1932, when for the very first time, OMEGA became the single private company entrusted with keeping time across all events at the Olympic Games, it has been developing a host of new technologies for accurate and immediate sports timekeeping. In 1952 OMEGA won the prestigious ‘Croix du Mérite Olympique’. In 1961 OMEGA introduced Omegascope which allowed the introduction of real time sports reporting on TV by superimposing live times on the bottom of the screen. In 1968, “integrated timing”, which provided statistical analysis with results being fed to judges, coaches and the media, was introduced.
Along with timekeeping and the distribution of results, data-handling became another important part of OMEGA’s contribution at athletics events in the mid-1990’s. In 2000, OMEGA’s on-screen graphics made it possible in some sports for TV viewers at home to see a “virtual record line” that indicated how close the competitors were to world records.
OMEGA’S timekeeping equipment include the electronic starting pistol and athletics starting blocks. While photoelectric cell technology gives OMEGA an immediate finishing time, the official time is always taken from the photofinish camera. Then there is the OMEGA Scan’O’Vision MYRIA, a combination of a time detector and a chronograph.
Nowadays, OMEGA uses the latest generation of photoelectric cells, of which, four are integrated into one unit, and positioned on the finish line of the athletics events to ensure even more accuracy at the moment that matters.
To measure wind speed, OMEGA provides a three-sided concentration clock which, can be connected to a photofinish camera and the wind speed can be automatically measured and displayed, without the assistance of a field operator.
