Olympic Games 1996

IYRU Olympic Update

CLOSE CO-OPERATION FOR DATA DISTRIBUTION

The excitement of a sports event is all about results, and athletes and spectators quickly grow impatient if the scoreboard does not show the order and times as fast as it should. There is little danger of long waits in Atlanta. The Olympic result system that gathers and stores data before channelling them to scoreboards, broadcasters and journalists contains an ingenious mixture of expertise from Swatch, IBM and Xerox, three of the GamesÕ official suppliers, and from ACOGÕs partners BellSouth telephone company and the Scientific Atlanta engineering firm.

Swatch systems, which have taken part in the timing of the Olympic competitions since 1932 without ever having full responsibility for the whole operation, will be on hand to capture the runnersÕ arrival at the finishing line or the touch of the swimmersÕ hand on the tiles of the pool. The numbers will then be transmitted to the IBM computers which register the times, points and placings in its data banks. Mike Gibbons, an engineer with Olympic Swatch, recently pointed out that his company will have to install 100 tonnes of hardware and hoped that these preparations could be carried out at each venue at least one week before the Games. Most of the timing equipment will indeed have to be installed once the sites are released from the Games.

Once inside the computers, the data will be transmitted by fibre optic cable to the thousands of televisions scattered about the Olympic sites after being filtered by Scientific Atlanta transformers which will enable them to appear on the screen. At the same time, printers will turn out hard copy bearing the emblem of each sport. The printersÕ work is tremendous: Xerox estimates that it will make 25 million copies over the seven days of the Games and has provided super-rapid printers for all venues, including twenty for the Olympic Stadium alone. These machines, which cost $200,000 a piece, can copy 92 pages a minute, a stunning performance in itself. But there are no medals for mechanical performance. As for mechanical problems, there should not be any, but should the unthinkable happen, telecopiers will be standing by to take over.

Drug Control in Sailing