¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Computers will almost outnumber competitors at the Olympics in Barcelona.
About 4000 are involved in organising the tickets, transport and accommodation;
another 5000 are being used by journalists; and there are two mainframes
building up a database of results and background information that is available
via public terminals to anyone attending the event. Computers will help
the judges to detect false starts and decide who is the winner in close
finishes. There is even computer art and karaoke to keep visitors amused.

An electronic system for pinpointing the winners in close finishes
is making its first appearance at the Olympics, after trials at the World
Athletics Championships in Tokyo last August. In the past, mechanical cameras
recorded close finishes on photographic film, but this meant a nail-biting
wait for the result while the film was developed and printed. The alternative
of high-speed video, which can be viewed immediately, produces large numbers
of successive, almost identical pictures that do not make the judges’ task
much easier.

Slit-Video, the latest system, combines film and video techniques. Developed
by Seiko, the Japanese watchmakers, the system takes up to 2000 video images
a second of the final 5 millimetres or so of the track through a slit just
10 micrometres wide – a quarter of the width of a hair. The result is a
series of long, thin images of the finishing line at different instances,
which can be stored in computer memory. When the images are combined on
a computer screen, they make up a seamless picture that looks like an ordinary
photograph. However, instead of being spaced out over a distance, the athletes
are spaced out over time.

Superimposed on the picture are a sequence of vertical lines with a
spacing equivalent to one-hundredth of a second. This resolution was fine
enough to pick out the winner of the epic 100 metres sprint in Tokyo last
August when the American Carl Lewis beat his compatriot Leroy Burrell by
two hundredths of a second, setting a new world record of 9.86 seconds.
Although the first six runners came in within 0.11 seconds of each other,
Slit-Video enabled their rankings to be identified easily. If greater precision
is necessary, the system can give times to the nearest thousandth of a second

LIGHT DETECTOR

At the heart of the Slit-Video camera is a detector called a charge-coupled
device. A CCD is like an array of tiny buckets on a piece of silicon. The
buckets begin to fill with electrical charge when light passing through
the camera lens shines on them. How full each one gets depends on the intensity
of the light shining on it. Electronic circuits convert the charge, bucket
by bucket, into an image for display on a VDU screen. In Barcelona, Slit-Video
cameras are on the finishing lines of track, cycling, rowing and canoeing
events.

At the other end of the race, electronic sensors are fitted into starting
blocks to detect false starts. The blocks sound a bleep in the starter’s
headphones if a competitor moves away within 100 milliseconds of the starting
pistol being fired. Not even top sprinters can respond to the gun faster
than that; Ben Johnson, the Canadian runner who was first to the finishing
line in the final of the 100 metres at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, could
only manage to respond in 115 milliseconds, and most sprinters take between
120 and 130 milliseconds.

For the 200 metres and shorter races, some field events, and ski jumps
in the Winter Olympics, a record cannot be set while competitors are ‘wind-assisted’
– that is, if a wind of more than 2 metres per second is blowing in their
favour. For this purpose, the wind speed must be measured within 2 metres
of the track and 1.22 metres above it, which corresponds roughly to the
middle of an athlete’s torso. In the past, anemometers with rotating propellors
have been used. They do not measure wind speed directly, but detect the
wind pressure, from which the speed is calculated. The calculations allow
for the inertia of the propellors, but cannot take into account any damage
to the bearings or the effect of dust and water vapour, which all distort
the measurements.

PRESSURE TO PERFORM

In Barcelona, an ultrasonic detector that measures wind speed directly
is making its Olympic debut. The device, known as the ultrasonic wind vector
system, consists of pairs of piezoelectric transducers in which one transmits
ultrasonic pressure waves and the other detects them. The time between transmission
and detection depends directly on the speed of the wind blowing between
them.

The piezoelectric detectors are made by Gill Instruments of Lymington
in Hampshire, and are usually sold to airports and meteorologists. Seiko
has provided the electronics to calculate the wind speed parallel to the
track and indicate it on a large display next to the track. The device is
accurate to 0.01 metres per second for winds above 0.5 metres per second.

Once the results have been decided, the information is fed into a single
database held on two IBM ES/9000 computers. The database serves four more
computer systems, known as Results, Administration, Commentators’ and Information
and Communication. This network cost £30 million to install according
to IBM, which met the cost as part of its sponsorship deal with the International
Olympics Committee. The two mainframes run the Results, Commentators’ and
Information and Communication systems, while an IBM AS/400 minicomputer,
also donated by IBM, handles the Administration system.

The Results system is connected to local area networks, or LANs, the
computer equivalent of internal mail systems, that are set up at 40 of
the 43 venues. Each network consists of PS/2 personal computers and is
linked to the main database through the Spanish telecommunications system.
Though the PCs are more powerful than is necessary for the machines to serve
simply as information points, the extra processing power allows them to
take some of the computing burden off the mainframes, says IBM. The system
is open to journalists and spectators.

The Administration System deals with accreditation, transportation,
accommodation and the issuing of tickets. It will also be used to organise
more than 100 000 volunteers. The AS/400 minicomputer has 65 terminals and
is also being connected to more than 50 PS/2s.

Journalists and spectators will also be able to use the Information
and Communications System from 600 Xerox Information Points or XIPs (pronounced
‘zips’) scattered around the venues and in the major hotels. The system
is served by two Xerox 6520 Sparc workstations. Each XIP consists of a 386
personal computer, which is operated by touching the screen, and a 4030
laser printer. It can supply results, statistics, biographies of the competitors,
weather forecasts, timetables and details of ceremonies. Like visitors to
the Expo in Seville, XIP users at the Olympics can send each other electronic
mail messages that are delivered when the addressee next uses a XIP.

The Commentators’ System keeps radio and television commentators up
to date with the latest results from all the venues as they happen for broadcasting
to the estimated 3.5 billion tele-vision viewers. It allows the 875 commentators
using PS/2 PCs with colour displays and keyboards or touch screens to edit
information for their own countries. When they begin using the system they
specify their country, and all the athletes from that country are highlighted
for them on the screen. The system also provides athletes’ biographies,
and details of the medals won so far and the records for each sport.

Another database, which can be accessed only through the Alcanet and
Infonet international communications networks, has been set up by Alcatel
Standard Electrica, a Spanish tele-communications company. The database,
which cost more than £11 million to develop, provides information
in the four official languages of the games, Spanish, Catalan, French and
English. Subscribers to the networks can find out about the history of the
games, records, biographies, Barcelona’s history, culture and contribution
to the games, tourist information on Catalonia and Spain, including Expo
’92 in Seville, and daily news.

‘In the last Olympics, the results were distributed by men running around
with bits of paper,’ says Paul Rutherford, publicity manager for Rank Xerox.
In Barcelona, computers will be pump-ing a torrent of information through
the 25th Olympiad.