Omega CEO Raynald Aeschlimann Explains the Technology Powering Olympic Timekeeping in Milan Cortina

You know what it's important if we go back to 1932 LA Games where the IOC already at that time had this incredible vision of what we see today with the Olympic Games being the biggest and also the most emotional sport moment in the history.

But for us being this kind of very special partners, we are the timekeepers.

It's also very important to be present, the whole viewers of the world.

They love sport, but they wanna be emotionally touched with the performance of the athletes, not with any doubt on timing and timekeeping and that's why we're here.

From an Olympic sport point of view.

It's so crucial to have at that moment the best and the most powerful timekeeping team around you.

Why?

First, because sport is the biggest inspiration that you can have for all the viewers, for all the nation, but also on the other.

The side for the athletes, it's their moment and Olympic Games, if I compare it with some other sports that we, you, we all hear a lot about sport, but at the Olympic Games if you're the best champion of the NHL or if you are the best champion in biathlon, you have the same medal.

Every single athlete dreams about coming to the games and making it into gold for me.

There's two aspects of being a timekeeper.

First, and that everybody knows all the competitors of all the athletes that we take as an ambassador, they also know that we do our job because we have a track record, but because also they know this is it, precision perfection.

But on the other side we talk about inspiration.

We know some of these of these guys because we are during the years.

Besides the Olympics, very, very, very much involved into some of the sports like aquatics , like many, many other ones.

So for me it's very important at that moment to have ambassadors.

The people we know that they're also inspiring even more the whole of the nation and by having them with us we also first can talk to them in order to make it even better and secondly also to very much kind of make it credible that we are dedicated to this sport plus you know we are also very emotional.

And I think that if they are ambassadors they represent also our values which are besides being an official timekeeper an incredible watch brand that is not arrogant that is hardworking because working on precision and the reputation we have it's so important but at the same time when you buy a watch you also want the image.

So you have a security that the watch is perfect, innovative, but you're also being inspired by some people that are representing us and hello, we are the official timekeeper of the Olympic Games.

So it's also good for us if we know that there are some incredible personalities competing that they're also part of our family.

The highlights always for me is always the opening ceremony because that's when we know we're celebrating, we're so happy and we've seen it again here, but we also know that every single athlete coming in he's a bit in this kind of a final stages of its preparation.

I'm not calling them.

I know so many of them.

They're not stressed, but still, time will come when they have to compete.

The one night before the opening ceremony we had exactly here the night of the timekeepers, I've almost seen the 300 people that are going to work for us.

They were ready and that's always a good moment where you say let's start a show.

It's also very nice to see a nation, every single nation, in a positive way, waking up so many people in front of.

television because they're not in the same time zone, just cheering for the people and our role as an official timekeeper is sometimes also to help them to cheer in front of the television by bringing additional information.

Computer vision we're using to redo every single part of their jump of their of their performance so that you know the whole world is being better and that's what sport is all about.

Already here in Milan we're testing new technologies for in 4 years.

Why what we're doing, we are creating any kind of new ways of highlighting the performance in every single sport, and highlighting means talking to athletes, asking them what can be, what kind of information you can do, but also the broadcasters or the television and sometimes even the viewers, because at the end of the day we all want people to.

Be able to enjoy even more the performance and I think that the information that we can get that's the basics for making them even more emotional looking at their television and that goes back to the invention from Omega in in Brook Olympic Games a long time ago when Omega.

Created a new machine at that time it was still not a computer to encrypt the time, just the time on the screen of everybody's home television to have this change many, many sports.

Why?

Because then suddenly you could see who was the quickest with intermediary time, for instance.

Then you just have more.

So for me all this we have to work on.

Around it's our mission to talk about it, but not on a technical executive basis only.

It's just to be at the service of every single viewer, and that's why our logos are everywhere, because they also show the world that what we give in today's world with fake news is 100% true and 100% precise.

You know, I always say our responsibility is to Deliver to make sure that all this information will be precise on the time but also at the same time not to make them depending so much because the responsibility of misusing all these data is also there.

So if you if you want, we're very much continuing this mission, this vision that we have of serving.

Everybody, but we'll never dedicate all our time to make them depending or to make them getting crazy because of them.

So for me it's really there where the limit is.

We're official timekeepers, so we want to serve but not to be misused.