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 Readers, at last the m oment had arrived in a very humid and slightly-crazed Singapore. The votes were cast on electronic handheld devices and the IOC was about to make its announcement. It was finally official - cue drumroll -Van Gogh is the IOC’s favourite artist!
Confused? Well, what’s the point of having an electronic voting system if you can’t have a bit of a wag with the practice vote? Four new members had joined the IOC ranks since the last time the electronic system was used, and hence needed to swot up on the old button pushing.
Last time, the actual bidding cities were used in the voting test. “The result flashed up, a certain city had won that wasn’t ours – or so we thought, not realising it was a test - and we all had heart attacks,” said one delegate, present at the last IOC Session to elect a host city.
Bearing in mind, many of the IOC voting members are aged over 60, artists therefore seemed a lot less risky. Particularly as they were not selected from the countries of any of the host cities – Paris, London, Madrid, Moscow and New York – thus avoiding any last minute favourtisim/spooky soothsaying.
The winning artist was announced, the system declared to be working and the voting for the 2012 host Olympic city was about to begin. Or so we thought. Technology was involved after all. It seemed that after the votes were cast for Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Magritte et al, an ‘ok’ flashed up on the handheld voting devices, before the screen then went blank, indicating the vote had been stored.
But apparently, this wasn’t going to happen for the voting ‘proper’. Or was it? Much confusion followed and the IOC technical director was asked by IOC president Jacques Rogge to explain three times, what would appear on the screens of the handsets, after the number was pressed for the city chosen. ‘Nothing’ was the eventual answer, there would be no ‘ok’ this time.
With that explained, round one of the voting commenced and the rest is history. With ArkSports Towers being based in the glittering metropolis that is London, we were still grinning like madfolk 12 hours on from the announcement. Sadly, the smile was soon to be wiped off our faces when we started hearing news of the atrocities unfolding back home...
Technology was an integral component of all the bidding cities’ final presentations to the IOC members. Top film directors were hired by some of the cities to make the most of their presentation time, and special effects galore were utilised to illustrate how new venues would transform the contenders if they were to win the ultimate Olympic prize.
With all the proceedings piped seamlessly to the press room and displayed on giant plasma monitors supplied by TOP sponsor Panasonic, S&T was more than happy with our technology fix during Singapore. Not to mention the odd Singapore Sling at The Raffles.
Game, set and transmission The week before the IOC 2012 announcement, S&T was kindly invited behind the scenes at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships by BT Media & Broadcast (formerly BT Broadcast Services), to salivate over technology of a different kind, namely the satellite and fibre systems that the global communications company supplies to the event’s rights owning broadcasters. It is certainly a job and a half, with BT’s technical crew on hand for gargantuanly long days, making sure that coverage goes out around the world without any problems, to the audiences of broadcasters such as ESPN, NBC and NHK, among others.
And the job isn’t without risks either. Imagine being stuck up on the roof at SW19, babysitting the temporary and rather big metal satellite dishes during a thunder and lightning storm. That’s what happened on ‘Stormy Tuesday’ during week two of this year’s tournament, and fortunately whilst no BT technician was struck by lightning and therefore turned into a pumpkin, the bad weather did mean that transmission went down in the wee small hours temporarily, affecting the end of a show being broadcast by RTL.
Satellites and their related equipment also need careful maintenance when the weather hits the other end of the extremities – such as the case when BT looks after uplinking at the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. The equipment can’t be allowed to overheat, so there’s a large dependency on portable air-conditioning systems. And if they fail, then we can only imagine that there is a lot of waving of rolled up paper to be done.
S&T would have sold our mothers (or at least our siblings) for a portable aircon system the other week when we were in the audience of the AFL’s version of The Footy Show, which was being transmitted live to Australia from London. Aircon was sadly lacking in the programme’s venue – a London West End theatre (don’t tell the IOC) – and S&T was witness to something we never thought possible – a thousand Aussies complaining about heat! However, it did mean that S&T’s idol and Footy Show host Sam Newman stripped down to his (grey) underpants at one point and paraded across the stage. Almost forcing us to choke on our St Kilda scarf (what with our tongues being so far out of our mouths).
But, as usual, we digress. Back to Wimbledon. As well as supplying the more traditional satellite systems, BT Media & Broadcast is seeing an increasing uptake of its fibre-based services by broadcasters, which was reflected at the tournament this year. “The Japanese and the Americans like fibre,” explained our host, major events manager Grant Parkinson of BT Media & Broadcast, who wasn’t talking about Weetabix, “because it is more practical
for point-to-point applications covering large distances. You also don't get the weather problems that can affect satellites - which makes it more secure and resilient. There's less delay and fibre can be more cost-effective than satellite.” A big advantage of fibre systems, continued Parkinson, lies in security. "As fibre is point to point, there’s no fear of pictures going astray and ending up being beamed illegally into some non-rights owning establishment, which can be a problem with satellite signals.
“Fibre doesn’t necessarily work for everyone though,” he added. “We are finding that European broadcasters can still take feeds from satellite systems quite easily, so it makes sense for them to continue using such systems. I expect we will see some broadcasters preferring satellite and others favouring fibre for a while to come. In many cases, we are now seeing broadcasters using fibre and having satellite systems as back up.” The new Dark Age looms BT should make the most of its technologies because, according to a recent report published by the Pentagon’s Naval Air Warfare Centre in the US, new technological innovations are set to peter out rapidly. Physicist Jonathan Huebner has claimed that technology will run out of steam in 20 years time as we are apparently enter a ‘Dark Age of Technology’. Thank goodness that’s well after the London 2012 Olympics. The boffin says that by that stage, we will have reached a peak in what can be developed in terms of new technology.
We say, get those patents in now, before it’s too late. Alternatively, just ignore Huebner and look forward to those holidays to the moon in your personal time machines (as given away by The Mail on Sunday – insert other tabloid newspaper title here, depending on which country you are from).
On a final note – yes readers, I know, we can hardly bear it either, the end of this column comes around so quickly (or not quickly enough depending on how tight your schedule is) - we’re off to get London 2012 tattooed on our foreheads. Only joking! Do you think we are mad? It’s not that S&T already has ECFC tattooed about our person in honour of our favourite soccer team Exeter City FC or anything is it? (Rats, we had that one done for free; see below).
Apparently, American Kari Smith, 30, has had Goldenpalace.com tattooed on her brow for a $10,000 fee. She says the cash from the advertising the online gambling firm will pay for a private education for her son, Brady. Hopefully it will also pay for the counselling he will suffer after he is bullied mercilessly at school (allegedly). Call us killjoys, but what’s the point of a person advertising an online gambling company while resident in a country where – oops – online gambling is illegal? And it looks stupid. Perhaps Ms Smith will get carted off any day now by the US advertising standards commission or the like. But then again, she could just grow her fringe/bangs out.
That’s finally it from Singapore and the 2012 shenanigans. Next stop for us is Melbourne for a fix or two of the St Kilda Saints. But of course taking care to avoid any tattoo parlours. Rachael Church - Editor Do you have any sports-related tattoos? Or do you prefer to use temporary body markings such as Henna that wash off quite easily? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, or if you are just stoked that London has won the 2012 Olympics, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com.
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