Fran Foo | August 12, 2008
MORE than two decades have passed since Carl Lewis's blistering pace bagged him the Olympics sprint double. As the athletics program kicks off this week in Beijing, all eyes will be on Jamaica's Usain Bolt to repeat the feat.
Security personnel at the Olympics Stadium in Beijing
If Bolt makes the final for both events he may be looking to the heavens for Eddie Tolan's luck.
In the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics the stopwatch and photo finish were used for the first time. Tolan's neck-and-neck finish with team mate Ralph Metcalfe in the 100m resulted in officials having to manually analyse newsreel film to get a winner.
In contrast, official timekeeper Omega is using high-speed cameras to capture images every 2000th of a second at Beijing.
Times have dramatically changed since the day Tolan struck gold, and over the years technology has become very much a part of the Olympic movement's DNA.
IBM is still etched in the psyche when Olympics technology is mentioned.
For 40 years, IBM has been in bed with the International Olympic Council as the official technology partner for the Games, at which some of its best and worst technologies were showcased.
Highlights include the first Olympics website at the Atlanta Games in 1996, but the centennial Olympics caused heartache for the company.
The IT systems were a shambles. Competitors' biographies were jumbled, for example. One athlete was said to be aged 95 while another was listed at 50cm tall. Fingers pointed at IBM, which earned the nickname Big Blues after a comedy of errors.
After the 2000 Sydney Olympics IBM handed the baton to Atos Origin, which has the technology rights until the 2012 London games.
Atos Origin's IT strategy for Beijing began in 2003, a year before the Athens Games.
It designed and built two major planks in the Olympics IT platform - games management systems (GMS) and information diffusion systems (IDS).
GMS comprises a suite of applications that are the engine of the Games. They include systems for participant accreditation, transportation resource allocation, entries, qualifying times and staff information.
IDS provides real-time competition results for news agencies, websites and officials, and a mega-intranet, Info2008, that is accessible by members of the media, athletes, coaches, officials and sponsors.
According to the Paris-based Atos Origin, journalists at this year's Olympics will, for the first time, be able to access the intranet using a laptop, via a wireless network.
In security also, the company claims it has its eye on the ball. "For Beijing, our IT security team expects 9.9 million filtered events per day, three times the figure in Torino" for the Winter Games, it says.
It's a good thing, then, that Atos Origin shares the tech burden with other paying partners. It oversees nine technology partners and sponsors - Lenovo, Panasonic, Omega, Kodak, Samsung, China Network, China Mobile and Sohu.com.
Thousands of IT devices are being used in Beijing, and Lenovo, as the official IT hardware provider, has the responsibility of ensuring its 30,000 desktops, laptops, printers and servers are in prime condition.
Lenovo's remit to provide technical support extends beyond the 35 competition venues.
"There are 13 non-competition venues that we support and that includes the media centre, athletes' villages and BOCOG," Lenovo Olympics technology director Wang Lei says. He leads a team of about 600 technology personnel.
BOCOG is the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.
Lenovo took two years to plan for the 17-day event but Lei and his team cut their teeth at the Torino Winter Games with similar duties. He was also in charge of IT for the torch relay program, which covered 135 cities on five continents over 100 days.
In some cities pro-Tibetan demonstrators had voiced their intention to protest (and some made good their promise) and the Chinese government alongside the host city were left guessing as to whether the relay would go ahead. Behind the scenes Lenovo had to ensure that, rain or shine, the systems were set up.
"The torch relay happens just for a day in one city but the work of setting up the operations centre has to be done at least a week in advance," he says.
Lenovo provides free internet access to athletes and coaches at six i.lounges, so they can surf, send email and upload videos between 8am and midnight.
They will have access to about 200 computers, Lei says. "Bandwidth is at least 30Mbps, so uploading videos won't be a problem. We have catered for them to send and receive large files without problems."
An estimated 4 billion viewers globally are expected to tune into the first Olympics to be delivered in high-definition.
Official partner Panasonic will provide 25 Astrovision displays with the largest measuring 9.2m high and 16.5m wide.
Panasonic will also have about 10,000 televisions, including plasmas, 2000 surveillance cameras, 284 audio systems and about 2300 set-top boxes at the Games.
There's something for everyone at the Olympics and IT companies want in on the action.
Qualcomm is not on the official sponsors list but nonetheless has developed a dual-language navigation system for visitors to China. The location-based application is modelled on Qualcomm's GPS technology and will run on telco China Unicom's net.
Visitors can use the software to find their way around Beijing and pinpoint Olympics venues.
Beijing will be remembered for many firsts but, as history shows, technology just gets better with each Olympic Games.