TIME FOR SOME SHOW JUMPING
Watching the clock will be key
In sport, regardless of the event, one thing rings true: Timing is everything.
Whether it’s a sprinter racing toward the finish line, a hockey puck sailing toward the net during the final seconds of a game, or an international equestrian guiding their steed toward the final jump, the outcome can change in an instant.
“For all athletes competing, it’s all about time,” says Alain Zobrist, chief executive of Swiss Timing.
The veteran timekeeper says a successful sporting event can be simplified to three things.
“You need an athlete to compete, you need a venue where the athletes can compete, and you need a timekeeper to provide the athlete with a proper time.”
Zobrist would know. In his role at the company, owned by Swatch Group, Zobrist and his team oversee timekeeping duties for a roster of prestigious international sporting events including the Commonwealth Games, the Melbourne Cup and the Tour de Romandie.
Perhaps it’s that simple equation of athlete plus venue plus timing that attracted brands such as Longines to athletics timekeeping more than 100 years ago.
“It started with stopwatches,” says Zobrist.
“Longines was the first company to have a semi-automatic timekeeping system. Back in 1912 at a gymnastics competition in Switzerland the stopwatches were connected to an electric cable that, as soon as it was crossed by an athlete, the stopwatch would stop.”
The technology has come a long way since then.
While Zobrist says the stopwatches are as accurate as they’ve always been, it’s the electronic advances of recording the time that have improved.
When it comes to timekeeping equipment for an international athletics event, there’s a lot of it. At the Commonwealth Games in Australia earlier this year, Zobrist and his team deployed more than 200 tonnes of timekeeping equipment.
“We can remove all reaction times that a human would have, and eliminate all human errors as well,” Zobrist says. “For athletes, it all of a sudden becomes a lot more fair; we become more precise and accurate at what we do, and that was the normal evolution of things with regard to sports timekeeping.”
That precise timekeeping operation — albeit on a much smaller scale — will be on display at Thunderbird Showpark in Langley on June 3 for the prestigious Longines Nations Cup event, which sees a roster of international riders from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Ireland saddle up for a chance to take home the $400,000 prize purse. The local stop on the Nations Cup tour is the only one in Canada.
When speaking about timing in equestrian events such as show jumping or dressage, you’re also talking about scores.
“Every sport is unique, every sport has its own set of rules. And every sport is performed in its own different environment,” Zobrist says.
“So, timekeeping is very specific to every single sport.”
In show jumping, each horseand-rider pair rides past a timer to initiate the start of their run. Another timer signal exists at the end of the ride in order to stop the clock. As they work their way through a preset series of jumps (called a course), they face potential penalties for a variety of infractions such as knocking down an obstacle (four penalties), getting one or more hoofs in a water jump (four penalties), or falling on the course (elimination). Exceeding the allotted amount of time to complete a course can also result in penalties ranging from one penalty per second to elimination.
The goal of each duo is to make it through the course with a “clean” run, free of all penalties.
“There is a lot more to timekeeping than just the start and stop,” Zobrist says. “People often don’t realize that there is a whole data processing behind it. It allows us to measure a performance, treat all the data that comes in, and share it, often worldwide, in less than 100 milliseconds.”
At the Langley event, the Swiss Timing team will be in the same room as the International Equestrian Federation judges to ensure all penalties are properly recorded so that any “scoring issues” can be resolved immediately following the ride.
“We cannot get anything wrong,” Zobrist says.
When the stakes are as high as they will be at Thunderbird, neither can the horse-and-rider pairs.