‘You cannot make any mistakes’: The man in charge of timing the Olympics explains how he does it

• The man in charge of timing the Olympics has told Insider about the pressure that comes with the job.
• Alain Zobrist is head of Olympic timing at Omega, which has timed every Olympics since 1932.
• Zobrist also spoke of how they deal with the arrival of new sports and how AI is changing the game.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The man responsible for timing at the Olympics has told Insider of the pressures that come with providing times while a billion people are watching.

Alain Zobrist, the head of Olympic timing at Omega, the official timekeepers of both the Olympics and the Paralympics, said the role comes with "a lot of pressure."

"You don't need much for a sports event to happen. You need athletes, you need a field of play or a pitch where they can compete and you need a timekeeper. Without Omega there would be no Olympics.

"Obviously that role comes with a lot of responsibility, we can not make any mistakes and we are very proud of having that role.

Zobrist used the example of the 100 meters sprint, the most-watched event at the games – won in 2021 by Italy's Lamont Marcell Jacobs.

"Imagine for the 100 meter. You're the head timekeeper, you're sitting behind your computer in the timekeeping room. The race lasts for 10 seconds and you know you have more than a billion people watching and waiting for the athletes' results and you can not make any mistakes."

Omega has been the Olympic timekeeper since 1932, but each games provides a unique challenge as new sports are added, Zobrist said.

"At Tokyo, we have five new sports in total. [To combat this] we have technology solutions that we make fit for the Olympics which means we deploy them in a slightly different way than at world cups or world championships.

"With speed climbing (a new event this summer). It was very interesting, especially for us as timekeepers. It's the second sport after swimming where the athletes can stop the times themselves which is obviously great and they do that with a little touchpad that is installed at the top of the timing wall."

Zobrist said the advancement of technology has changed how Omega works and spoke of how they work with athletes to improve their craft.

"The big, big step now has really been the motion sensors and positioning systems.

"We're using different types of technology to measure the athletes' performance in real time. In athletics, for example, we're using a little sensor that is placed in the bibs of the athletes.

"We measure speeds, accelerations, decelerations, the positions of the athletes on the track and that allows us to really explain the athletes' performance on the track in a lot more detail.

Zobrist explained that the sensors can measure "over 2,000 data points per second" relating to athlete performance. This information is then shared with broadcasters in real time for use on TV coverage of the games.

"The other technology we're using as well in swimming for example are computer vision cameras so we can track the athletes swimming in a very accurate way so we have their speed, their acceleration, deceleration.

"We can measure time on the water, number of strokes. All of that is very valuable information that we share with athletes and coaches."

One new technology Zobrist believes will play an increasing part in sport and timing in the future is artificial intelligence.

"From what we are seeing with the artificial intelligence we're deploying in Tokyo is that it allows us to analyze the performance of athletes in a much more accurate way.

"Certainly in a way that we were not able to do before. So the granularity of the analysis is much greater and over time we will be able to compare athletes' performances through time and that's going to be very interesting.

"Eventually we can also help athletes and coaches to evolve their training programme to increase the quality of their performance. I think at some point in the future every club or sport will have some form of this in their training. Some already do and it's certainly going to evolve."