Watching the Nordic skiing world championship on television now. As you might know, all skiers have small ID chips around their legs, to measure their time and position several times around the slope. But only every 3 or 4 kilometers or so. When the technology gets cheaper, FIS really should consider adding lots more places where times are measured.
Like every time the slope changes from going up to going down. Then offer the tv-stations statistics (ons-screen) showing which athlete has the best speed uphill and downhill. Right now the commentators are speculating wildly whether their national athlete have good enough skies or not. Almost every slope has a very hard hill, where the best athletes leave the others behind (or try to!) If times are measured at the start and end of the hill, we could see who did this the best etc.
When watching NBA (or any other “American” sport), you get statistics for everything. Which makes it more fun to watch. Other sports must learn from this. People used to be entertained watching a skier go for hours and hours with no statistics except when passing the stadium every 10 kilometers or so. Computerize skiing!
I just watched the last kilometers of the men’s 2×15 kilometers pursuit race. Five athletes were entering the stadium for the last sprint, only four seconds from first to last. After the finish the commentators are discussing which athlete had the highest speed in the sprint and how many meters he gained over the others. Why not measure their position every meter the last 500 meters? And give us instant graphics showing which one did “win” the sprint (but not necessarily the gold).
The aerial shots over the skiers are amazing. Long wires are put over the stadion and some of the hills. And the camera flies over, alongside and right behind. Which of course is a result of a new generation of tv-viewers (and tv-producers?), demanding more spectacular pictures. When you have played Xbox/Playstation football, hockey, tennis, basketball games all week, and seen amazing (computer) camera shots from every possible angle, you somehow get bored when there’s just a camera or five trying to cover the action. And all cameras are just stuck where they are.
Not any more. The Ski World Championships now tries to be a cool videogame. And it works – except for the producer forgetting to show pictures of the men and woman leading once in a while. I guess someone needs to write a scripts that makes an alarm sound when the fastest athlete is approaching a camera somewhere…!
See Oberstdorf 2005 / Edit Wikipedia, full results at FIS ski