![]() One wonders whether this decision was linked to the last-ditch anti-commercialisation campaign being waged by Avery Brundage, the ageing IOC President who was in his last term in office.Īt a meeting of the IOC's Executive Board in March 1969, not long after the Mexico Games, Brundage drew attention to "the fact that on all photographs taken during Olympic competitions the name Omega is clearly visible". "It needed a lot of equipment, a lot of people." The company "came to the conclusion that it was I think too expensive for one firm to do it," Oswald told me. ![]() I also happened to discuss this subject in a recent interview with Denis Oswald, the Swiss IOC member, who participated in those Munich Games and subsequently became a leading official in the Swiss timekeeping industry as well as President of the International Rowing Federation (FISA).Īccording to Oswald, Omega had been responsible for time-keeping at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City - at which, incidentally, he picked up a bronze medal in the coxed four - but had then "decided to stop". "The Swiss delegation to the Munich Olympics has won another medal," the text proclaimed, "and while it may be the last chronologically speaking, it is not the least important". One of the events which Omega missed was the Munich Games of 1972, when timing duties were performed by a combination of Longines, a Swiss rival, and Germany's Junghans.Ī photograph I came across in a Swiss newspaper from the following year shows a youthful and heavily-sideburned Sepp Blatter - "head of the Longines delegation" - receiving an award for the company's contribution from Munich burgomeister Georg Kronawitter. Omega has been a common presence at Olympic Games ©Getty ImagesĮagle-eyed Olympic fans will have noted that there have been 38 editions of the Games, Summer and Winter, since 1932, and that there must therefore have been occasions when timing has been handled by someone else. ![]() Since then, as this week's announcement stated, "Omega has served as official timekeeper 27 times". Said chronometers were "loaned to the Organising Committee and each was specifically tested for the Games and carried an official certificate as provided for in the rules of the International Athletic Federation".Ī helpful photograph on page 94 enables readers to compare one of these chronometers with an "ordinary watch". ![]() So I thought it would be interesting to write about the period, nearly 50 years ago, when the relationship might easily have foundered but for some creative corporate thinking on the part of Swiss business leaders.įirst, 1932: the Official Report of the Games of the Tenth Olympiad in Los Angeles does indeed record that: "Official timing in all events was done by means of thirty Swiss chronometers of the split-second type". The announcement made much of the longevity of the partnership - "the extension marks 100 years since the start of Omega's relationship with the Olympic Games" "2032 is an important milestone, as it will mark 100 years since the Olympic Movement was first able to count on Omega's timekeeping solutions" et cetera. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Omega announced a 12-year extension of their global sponsorship deal, all the way through to 2032. This line from Time by Pink Floyd seemed apt this week. "No-one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun".
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