After Pia Skrzyszowska and Nadine Visser had crossed the line together in the final of the 100 metres hurdles at the Birmingham 2026 European Athletics Championships, the two women waited nervously for the outcome of the photofinish.
Poland’s Skrzyszowska looked slightly more confident, her name at the top of the scoreboard, while her Dutch rival contemplated another near miss. But after an agonising wait, the names suddenly flipped around and it was Visser who was deemed to have won the gold medal by one-thousandth of a second.
Track officials were able to separate the two athletes thanks to OMEGA’s Scan’O’Vision Magic Pro photofinish camera, which captures thousands of digital vertical images per second aligned precisely with the finish line.
It revealed that Visser’s torso had crossed the vertical plane a fraction of a millimetre ahead of Skrzyszowska’s. It is precisely for these high-stakes moments that European Athletics relies on Official Timekeeper OMEGA.
Athletics is unique among competitive sports, with up to seven different disciplines taking place simultaneously on a single field of play. To meet this challenge, bespoke technical infrastructure is built at every major championship to deliver timing and scoring, on-venue results (OVR) and distance measurement across the entire programme.
The Art of In-House Engineering
At the heart of track officiating is the photofinish camera. While generic, off-the-shelf equipment can be adapted for local meets, elite governing bodies require a level of precision that demands entirely custom-built hardware and software.
OMEGA takes immense pride in developing its technology completely in-house, the design cycles deliberately long and rigorous. Driven by a focus on absolute precision, over the last decade OMEGA has introduced only three iterations of its core photofinish camera technology.
Each generation represents years of painstaking refinement, ensuring that when two athletes cross the line separated by thousandths of a second, the display of photofinish images provides an absolute and unquestionable result.
Raynald Aeschlimann, President and CEO of OMEGA, says, “With more than 90 years of timekeeping experience, OMEGA has established itself as a leader in the field of sports precision. We have evolved our technology to the most innovative standard, providing a service that all athletes, spectators and judges can entirely depend on.”
Video Distance Measurement for Long Throws
While photofinish represents the established bedrock of timing, Video Distance Measurement (VDM) is rapidly becoming the standard for field events. Already seamlessly deployed for long jump and triple jump, VDM eliminates the need for manual tape measures or optical prisms. However, expanding video measurement to the long throws of discus, hammer and javelin presents a far more complex video-computing challenge.
During the championships in Birmingham, a dedicated three-person engineering team worked quietly in ‘shadow mode’, installing specialised cameras, cables and tracking equipment around the venue purely to capture trial data. Operating entirely in the background without affecting live competition, these tests gathered the raw video metrics required to train algorithms to pinpoint an exact landing mark in real time.
This shadow testing marks the start of a new R&D development targeting multi-sport deployment, including winter disciplines like ski jumping. With major long-term milestones like the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games on the horizon, these championship trial runs form the vital foundation for the official systems of tomorrow.
Smart Bibs and Stadium Telemetry
Alongside official measurement sits live telemetry, the real-time metric engine that provides speed, acceleration and split gaps during a race. The immediate technical challenge here is human: gathering rich data without disturbing the athlete.
Today's active transponder chips weigh approximately 20 grams and are woven invisibly into the reverse of the race bib. At this weight the transponder is imperceptible, ensuring zero impact on an athlete's focus, posture or biomechanics.
However, the true friction of live telemetry lies not on the athlete’s chest, but in the surrounding stadium environment. Deploying real-time tracking requires fitting up to 20 specialised antennae around a venue within a tight two-day installation window. Because every stadium possesses unique architecture and local signal traffic, engineers must constantly contend with radio-frequency interference.
Constant, real-time adjustment
“The real operational challenge is the stadium environment itself,” says Nicolas Launois, European Athletics Head of Technology and Data. “When the stadium broadcasting units power up on competition morning, frequency interference can suddenly degrade the signal quality of the antennae. It requires constant, real-time adjustment with local spectrum managers to ensure the broadcast team receives reliable, high-quality data.”
Yet regardless of how sophisticated live bib tracking becomes, a clear line remains between telemetry and timing. The transponder data provides brilliant, immediate context for journalists, commentators and fans, but the photofinish camera at the line remains the sole, undisputed arbiter of official results.
Technology in athletics succeeds when it achieves two distinct goals at once: remaining entirely invisible to the athlete on the track, while providing total clarity to the judges on the finish line. As processing power expands and camera technology evolves, the partnership between European Athletics and OMEGA continues to prove that behind every dramatic sporting moment is an equally impressive feat of silent engineering.