Omega Watches and the Olympics - A Bond as Strong as Time

The year is 1932. All that everyone seems to be talking about is the Olympics, which are slated to take place from the 30th of July to the 14th of August in Los Angeles, California, in the United States. A lone Swiss watchmaker has travelled all the way from Bienne, armed with 30 split-second chronographs, and, for the first time, the Olympics is set to have an official timekeeper and standard equipment for the judges to time the various disciplines.

This Swiss watchmaker was Omega, and the impact was such that William M. Henry, the Sports Technical Director of the Olympic Games at the time, wrote a letter dated August 18, 1932, thanking the watchmaker’s involvement, saying, “It is impossible to contemplate the wonderfully successful Olympic Games without recognizing the part played by Omega in this great international event,” marking the start of a partnership and jeweled legacy.

Ever since 1932, Omega has been the official timekeeper for the Olympic Games. At these events, Omega has gone above and beyond to introduce breakthrough technologies, right from the 1/10th of a second stopwatch in 1932 to the 1/1000th of a second timekeeping equipment of today. While this history is filled with some iconic moments and several inventions, we want to shed light on just how impactful Omega’s impact on timekeeping in sports has been by sharing just a few examples.

1948 is arguably the year when machines started to outperform humans – on the timekeeping front anyway. The machine in question is the photoelectric cell that was used at the ‘48 Olympics at St. Moritz and the Summer Games in London. It replaced the traditional finish line tape with a highly reactive beam of light, which would electronically stop the time as soon as the athlete crossed the finish line – this allowed the time to be measure to the accuracy of 1/1000th of a second – a significant improvement over the reaction of the human eye.

Over the years, Omega kept making advancements with cameras and finding ways to make results in sports like Swimming more accurate through the means of electronics. But the biggest jump came in 1964, at Innsbruck, Austria. Omega brought in the ‘Omegascope,’ which introduced the concept of "real time" in televised sports by superimposing times of athletes on the bottom of the screen – revolutionizing timekeeping, yet again.

At Mexico City in 1968, Omega found itself innovating yet again. This time, they introduced the world’s first swimming Touchpads, which were 90cm high by 240cm wide, with two-thirds of their surface immersed in the water. They reacted to the slightest of touches, so that when an athlete reached the finish, they were able to stop the time with their own hands. Now, there was no disputing the precision of swimming results.

These innovations followed in pretty much every iteration of the Olympics that Omega was the official timekeeper of – from the Omega Scan-O-Vision, which is the best-known version of the Photofinish camera (capable of recording time to the accuracy of 1/1000th of a second), to the futuristic starting pistol that Omega invented for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, to the Omega Quantum Timer from 2012 that could measure time to a millionth of a second – it has been a history of unwavering commitment, innovation and trust between the athletes and the timekeepers for the overall betterment of sport.

What started with 30 split-second chronographs to over 300 timekeepers and 200 tonnes of Omega equipment at the ‘22 Beijing Olympics, the 2024 Olympics in Paris marked the 31st anniversary of Omega being the official timekeeper of the biggest sporting spectacle in the world.

Researching this story quickly became a stark reminder of the scale of the Olympics, and how truly global a spectacle it really is. Subsequently, it is also a stark reminder of the sheer responsibility that has rested on the shoulders of Omega for the last 92 years. With this bond between the Olympics and Omega, we can only wait in anticipation to see where this journey goes in the years and decades to come.

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The 2024 Paris Olympics marked the 31st anniversary of Omega being the official timekeeper of the event