As the sprinters raced down the straight in the men’s 100-meter final (pictured above) at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August, Karen Washington activated the infrared laser beam at the finish line that showed the unofficial time. Official times are calculated from an athlete’s torso using cameras that can capture up to 10,000 images per second.
She had the same job when Usain Bolt ran his world record time of 9.58 seconds in Berlin in 2009. “I feel like I never wanted him to break that time [again] because it was as much my record as his,” she says.
We are talking about the track at the National Athletics Center on the Danube, two days before the competition begins in Hungary. Washington is one of 65 people who work for Seiko to fulfill its role as official timekeeper of the championships.
With reporting from 46 broadcasters as well as media and photographers from 75 countries, this business line increases the global brand awareness of the Japanese watch manufacturer.
Since the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Seiko has provided timing and measurement services for sports from swimming to speed skating. There has been a contract with World Athletics since 1985, and the first World Athletics Championships took place in Rome in 1987.
The seven-strong Seiko Timing Services team in the UK, working with external specialists, oversees this partnership from a warehouse in Crewe, north west England, where there are equipment testing workshops.
Karen Washington and the Seiko team provided timing services for this year’s World Athletics Championships © Andras D. Hajdu
Seiko’s camera (top right) is capable of taking 60 frames per second © Michael Steele/Getty Images
“We’re always striving to make things more accurate and reliable, and that’s where a lot of camera technology comes in because it allows things to be checked; You don’t have to make a split decision right away,” says Laurie Needham, research and development manager at Seiko Timing Services, who has a doctorate in biomechanics. “But it’s also about getting the information back quicker to make the competition run more smoothly – so that it’s ultimately more entertaining for people to watch.”
In Budapest, the team presents its latest innovation: the triple jump phase measurement. Developed over the course of almost three years, this system uses a camera capable of recording 60 frames per second, mounted high above the runway. Artificial intelligence uses the images to track an athlete’s movements as they hop, skip and jump and generate data for the distance, height and speed of each of these phases.
The data will help broadcasters “tell the story” of the event, but could also be used by athletes to improve their performance, Needham says.
“It’s a bit of a change for us in terms of not just doing precise timing and measurements [but] It also provides entertainment data that broadcast and television can use to help people understand why someone performed better than someone else,” he explains. “It could be that one athlete reaches their top speed five meters before takeoff, but another athlete reaches their top speed a meter before that, and maybe that helps them go further.”
Seiko’s imaging system uses artificial intelligence to track an athlete’s movement © Andras D. Hajdu
The new system is equipped with video distance measurement (VDM), in which two high-resolution cameras record an athlete’s landing in the sandbox. A separate jump management system, similar to football’s now-ubiquitous video assistant referee, uses a camera that captures 300 frames per second to show the point at which an athlete jumps off the board. A judge sitting among the Seiko employees operating these systems uses the information to determine the validity of a jump.
Most people who work for Seiko Timing Services at the championships have full-time jobs in other professions. Washington, an accountant who runs a road transportation company with her husband, Ian, first joined the timing team for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. She had worked as a buyer at Seiko’s British headquarters when the company was looking for more graphic artists. It was a fortuitous decision: she met Ian, who was operating the false start equipment at the time.
Daniel Jones’ team at Seiko operates the track clocks, field event boards and the TV precision system © Andras D. Hajdu
Leading the team in Budapest is Daniel Jones, event manager at Seiko Timing Services. When we meet, he has already been on site for more than ten days, overseeing the construction of the 2,000 pieces of equipment (excluding individual cables) that arrived in six 13-tonne trucks from the UK and a container from Japan.
His team operates everything from the trackside clocks and scoreboards for field events to the local precision system that provides data on athletes’ individual performances for television purposes. Seiko Timing Services is in the final stages of developing video tracking that will eliminate the need for athletes to wear tags with ultra-wideband technology behind their bib numbers. In addition, consideration is being given to replacing the laser-based electronic distance measurement in long throws (javelin, hammer and discus) with a camera-based VDM system, similar to what is already used in shot put.
For the false start system, the athletes’ blocks are calibrated to detect whether someone reacts before the weapon is fired or the reaction time is 0.1 seconds. A waveform indicates illegal movement. Video recordings from both the back and front of the athletes support the referee in his decision to disqualify an individual.
“In all of these trials, we’re just passing information to the right judges, and it’s up to them to make the right decision,” Jones said.
Seiko’s limited edition World Athletics 2023 solar chronograph © Seiko
Seiko reflects its expertise in precise timekeeping in its Prospex Speedtimer watch series. According to Attila Lichtenberger, general director, demand for the limited edition World Athletics 2023 solar chronograph with a hundredths of a second counter and a dial that mimics the texture of the running track was five times greater than predicted at the brand’s Budapest store, Seiko Boutique Budapest and Seiko Hungary.
In the United Kingdom, traffic to the Seiko Boutique website increased by 15 percent during the eight-day championship compared to the previous eight days, and the limited edition model was the best-selling Prospex design in the week leading up to the event.
As the demands on Seiko Timing Services shift more and more toward the “entertainment factor,” Jones hopes to see collaboration between the “fun side” of his department’s work and Seiko watchmaking. However, he knows that the two are already connected. “We are here to ultimately promote the watches and the Seiko brand,” he says.
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