OMEGA OLYMPICS & A TIME KEEPING HISTORY
IT WAS THE YEAR 1932, IN LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES, when Omega made history as the first single private watch company to be selected as the Official Timekeeper of the Olympic Games. The prestigious title was not brought forth through the means of sponsorship, but rather Omega was chosen for its unrivalled reputation in precision awards and excellence. Its pocket watch chronographs at the time were deemed the most reliable instruments for measuring world-class performances at sporting events. Responding to the request by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to supply all sports timing devices at that year’s Olympics, a watchmaker arrived in L.A. from Bienne for the historical moment, bringing with him 30 high-precision stopwatches – all certified as chronometers by the Observatory at Neuchâte – that were able to capture results to the nearest 1/10th of a second. The first Olympic Winter Games that Omega partook in was the 1936 event held at the twin villages of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. There it had to face and overcome new challenges posed by the starkly contrasting conditions of winter events to the usual summer events. Twenty years into its timekeeping role at the Olympics, Omega’s “exceptional services to the world of sport” was recognised with the IOC Cross of Merit award at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.