New Devices Help Track Olympic Winners

Darren writes "Athletes are going faster, higher and longer and as a result the technology that measures their feats at the Olympics needs to keep up. As a result a number of new devices to help track winners, losers at the Games have been developed, including microchips on marathon runners' shoes, ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool, radar guns at the beach volleyball and cameras that take 1000 images per second."

Comments

Yeah...

[Black Parrot]

> ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool

I used to know a girl who had a couple of those.

Fairness

[Anonymous Coward]

No Fair! They will be changing the outcome when they measure the outcome.

Re:Fairness

[ackthpt]

No Fair! They will be changing the outcome when they measure the outcome. A finish line is still a finish line. Though I can't recall when they were so precise they could count 100ths of a second.

Worry about how they'll apply lasers and 3D analysis to score gymnasts, regarding how closely they follow their selection and how 'artistic' it is. Anything judged seems ultimately fair game, though seems more sci-fi than prospective reality anywhere in the near future.

'Maybe if they have to wear barcoded suits...'

Sabre

[ackthpt]

I was at the pub watching the men's sabre competition and we noticed they were wearing helmets the light up in different colors, also wear clothing that detects contact and prevents the usual bloodletting a strike would make. Pretty interesting stuff.

Re:Sabre

[DarkFencer]

Actually other then the fact that the fencing equipment in the olympics is wireless, there isn't much new to the electronic sensors. Fencing was one of the first sports to benefit from electronics due to the extreme speed of the action (sabre fencing is the fastest martial art in the world).

Even with the sensors, an extremely skilled judge (called a director in fencing) is required to determine which competitor is considered the agressor and has 'right-of-way' to see who gets the point.

On a side note, as a long time fencer actually getting to watch the sport in the olympics for the first time I realised one thing. It is a really bad spectator sport if you do not know the sport yourself. I watched the events on tv with family and friends and unless they showed a slow motion replay, people were just at a loss as to what happened (unless they were fencers themselves).

That's cool for track...

[Xxanmorph]

Now we just need a way to stop the judges from doing something stupid in gymnastics and we'll be set.

Something tells me

[baximus]

Something tells me that the technology used will inevitably be faster than the athletes it's used to track. Athletes are, after all, not going twice as high, twice as long or twice as fast, every two years.

Re:Something tells me

[space77pup]

True, but it definitely does have to exceed the athlete's abilities. It seems that every Olympics the margin between Gold, Silver and Bronze gets smaller and smaller. What was the difference between Gold and Bronze in the Men's 100M Dash? .02 of a sec. If the technology was even 10 years older, they would probably have called a tie between all three of them.

False Starts

[viggen9]

Apparently the athletes are improved, too. In track events, a start time within 0.1 seconds of the gun going off is considered a false start. Apparently 0.1 seconds is the fastest reaction time that humans are capable of. Some athletes, though, are now able to react in under 0.1 seconds, and as a result, they are being charged with false starts.

Re:RFID Chips

[bigberk]

Putting RFID chips on your shoes is nothing new.

Civil liberties people prepare to be shocked. Not only are RFID chips in your shoes, but according to the July 2004 IEEE Spectrum, they're also in

• All Dockers khaki pants
• All Colgate Shave Cream packages
• All Trojan Ultra Ribbed condom boxes
• Some Gilette razors

While I'm sure that nobody is tracking you right now, RFID tags can be read by several meters away and contain unique identifiers. If you thought the Pentium chip unique IDs were bad, this should (rightly so) worry you considerably more.

Re:That's fine and all...

[kfg]

. . .is there a device to track Olympic Weiners?

See above post about RFID tags in condoms.

KFG

Re:RFID Chips

[Scrameustache]

Not only are RFID chips in your shoes, but according to the July 2004 IEEE Spectrum, they're also in [...]
All Trojan Ultra Ribbed condom boxes
[...] this should (rightly so) worry you considerably more.

It does...

Why the "Ultra ribbed" ones?
What are they hiding? What are they trying to find out?!

I'm scared.

FinishLynx

[pHatidic]

The coolest tech out there is definitely finishlynx. It takes pictures of who crosses the finish line only a pixel or two wide and stitches them together so you know exactly who crossed the line in what order and what their times were since the times are exactly proportional with the pics. In this pic of me in the men's lightweight single dash I am finishing 3rd (Alex Krupp, lane 1). The reason I appear so bloated compared to everyone else is I put on a huge fucking sprint at the finish and even though I was a full boat length of open water down on 5th place with 100 meters left I managed to finish 3rd. Not bad for not eating shit or drinking much in 2 days to make weight. Anyway because I was going so much faster than everyone else at the finish I appear in the least number of pixel wide images, thus making me appear bloated and compressed compared to all the other boats. The reason all the oars are swirly is because they change positions from when the first part of the oar crosses the line to when the whole boat is passed, thus creating a cool real time motion blur.

Re:RFID Chips

[nakaduct]

Putting RFID chips on your shoes is nothing new.

These are the soles... that time men's tries!