Timing is everything for Peter Hürzeler, a man for whom “good enough” simply isn't.
At 74, Omega’s chief Olympics timekeeper is making his 16th and final appearance at the Games, leading 450 technicians and some 800 volunteers who will use more than 400 tons of equipment to ensure peerless accuracy in timekeeping. The Games are as much a showcase for Omega as they are for the athletes, a chance for the Swiss watchmakers to show off the latest advances in sports timing technology — including a clock accurate to one-millionth of a second.
Even Hürzeler concedes that level of precision is largely gratuitous, but no matter. Omega built the system because it could, and because Hürzeler believes he owes it the 10,000-plus athletes who will compete in the 2012 Summer Games.
“We have to be a company who’s working for the athletes,” Hürzeler says. “For nobody else. And the athletes, they have the right to get the correct time. And to give a correct time you have to use a system that is really accurate.”
More Olympics coverage:
Embracing Tech to Build Better Olympic Athletes
Olympic Evolution: 116 Years of Official Events
Olympic Robo-Cams Make Human Photogs Sweat
To Break the Olympics Website, Use the Cloud
Doping: The Cat and Mouse Game of the GamesOmega is celebrating its 25th Olympiad, a history that dates to the 1928 1932 Games in Los Angeles when the company distributed 30 hand-held chronograph stopwatches to judges. Times, and timing, have changed a lot since then, and Omega ushered in the modern era of sports timing at the 1948 Games with photoelectric cells, starting blocks and the slit photo finish camera.
Hürzeler joined Omega in 1969 after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering and spending a few years playing second-division ice hockey in Biel/Bienne. Sports timing was still a small operation for the Swiss giant, with just 14 people responsible for the development, testing and implementation of timing equipment for the Games. Today his team includes 169 people in Switzerland and 230 in Germany.
In the years since his first Games in 1972, Hürzeler's had a hand in most major advancements in sports timing. The one he is most proud of, though, are his improvements to swimming touch pads, which were a revolutionary development because athletes to stop the timer by applying 1.5 to 2.5 kilograms of pressure with their fingertips. They were first used in the 1967 Pan-American Games and at the Olympics in 1968, and remain in place even today — something Hürzeler, a man driven by relentless perfection, finds difficult to believe.
“Several times I told them we have to do something new, but at the end they’re telling me that as long as everything is working perfectly, like now, it’s maybe stupid to develop a new thing,” he says.
That doesn’t keep Hürzeler from moving ever forward, even if he did "retire" six years ago but stick around at the request of Omega brass, who named him to the board. Omega’s latest development in sports timing is the Quantum Timer, which is accurate to a microsecond — one-millionth of a second. That’s faster than the blink of an eye, which takes 350,000 microseconds, and 100 times more accurate than its predecessor, the Aries.
Omega, understandably, won’t say much about what’s inside the unassuming plastic box housing what is one of the most advanced quartz timepieces ever built. But it includes 16 independent clocks, 128 inputs, 32 outputs and a complete backup system with its own power supply. It weighs a mere 1.8 kilograms, compared to previous systems that topped 20 kilos.
Perhaps more impressive is the precision with which Quantum operates. Omega says it delivers precision of 0.1 parts per million, meaning there is a maximum variation of only one second out of 10 million seconds or a thousandth of a second out of every thousand seconds. The previous devices had precision of 0.5 ppm, making Quantum five times more accurate.
Quantum makes its debut in London, where it will be used in swimming and track cycling events. Other innovations Omega is bringing to London include:
Refined starting blocks in track and field. The new false-start detection system, sought by sprinters and tested by athletes like Tyson Gay and Jessica Ennis, is entirely electronic. The previous system, used since the 1976 Games in Montreal, relied upon the athlete pushing the block back 5 millimeters at the start; the release of the block determined the runner’s reaction time. (Because humans cannot react to sound in less than 0.1 second, any reaction time faster than that is disqualified. Sprinters typically respond in 0.13 second.) The new blocks use electronic sensors that measure the force against the block to determine reaction time.
“With the new system, this is completely electronic,” Hürzeler said. “It is moving nothing. No millimeter, no tenth of a millimeter, and that’s what the athletes like.
The new blocks are coupled with a new starting gun, which looks nothing like a gun. When the gun is “fired,” the “shot” is broadcast through a tiny speaker at the back of each starting block so every runner hears it at precisely the same time. At the other end of the track, two cameras, plus a backup, shoots 2,000 frames per second to determine those races too close to call.
The “swimming show.” Each swimming starting block features lights to indicate the top three finishers. A single large dot indicates first place, two medium-sized indicate second, and three small dots denote third. The system was designed primarily for spectators, who know the outcome at a glance without looking at the main scoreboard. The system also can indicate the top three competitors at every 100-meter interval.
The open water gate, used in the swimming marathon. Gates will be erected at the beginning and end of the course and at selected locations along the way to determine intermediate times along with the final time. The gates use transponders that react to transponders worn on each athlete's wrist. The finish line also uses high-def cameras for backup, and to decide the winner in races too close to be determined by transponders alone.
Hürzeler equates Omega’s constant technology pursuit to Formula 1 racing. Year to year, every car has four tires and an engine, but small refinements make them faster from one season to the next. This is what Omega does from one Olympiad to the next — push the envelope just a little further in a constant quest for the greatest precision possible.
"It’s like the Quantum," he said. "The system is the same. You have to get the start and you finish time, and before we were able to go to 10 thousandths of a second, now we can go to one millionth of a second. I think we don't need it in the future. It's only to show how precise it is."
