Tissot technology allows 10,000 images per second to be taken to determine who has won in a very tight finish
On stage seven of the 2017 Tour, the human eye faced one of the toughest challenges cycling has ever faced. Marcel Kittel, the great sprinter of the time, and Edvald Boasson Hagen they had reached the finish line of Nuits San Georges with an absolutely extraordinary equality. No matter how much one looked at the image, it was impossible to discern whether the victory had been for the German for the Norwegian. But there was no draw, because technology came to the rescue and determined that, by just six millimeters, a Pyrrhic margin, Kittel had achieved his third stage victory of that Tour.
“There will always be a first and a second,” he points out. Pascal rossier, responsible for Tissot Timing, the company responsible for timing the Tour, as well as other events such as the Giro, the Vuelta and the World Cups and competitions as diverse as the NBA, the MotoGP World Cup, the Six Nations … “There are ‘ sprints’ very tight, in which it is not possible to determine who has won with the traditional camera, but it is possible with our technology for the ‘photo finish’, because it is millimeter “, deepens the head of the Swiss company in a conference with various international media, including EL MUNDO.
What is popularly known as a ‘photo finish’ is actually a fixed camera placed by Tissot over the finish line capable of capturing 10,000 images per second. And they not only serve to determine who is the winner of the stage, but also to order the rest of the cyclists, since it is not the same (for example) to be 12th than 13th, since a single position has an impact on secondary classifications. , especially that of regularity, and also in the distribution of UCI points and financial prizes.
“Our job is to measure time, of course, but also to manage the competition itself,” he deepens Rossier. Through what they call ‘chronopole’, the traveling room where all temporal data is received, processed and managed, Tissot facilitates the official classifications, both stage and general as well as secondary ones, the distribution of points in ‘sprints’ intermediate and mountain prizes and also the temporal references that are superimposed in the television production, offering the viewer decisive information to understand the development of the race at all times.
Transponders
Eight people work every day on the Tissot Timing traveling caravan during the three weeks of the Tour. In the time trials, the staff is doubled to 16 workers, since it requires a greater volume of work. The infrastructure is larger and needs to be installed in a few hours, since the ‘chronos’ tend to start earlier than the online stages do.
The information in these cases comes from transponders (a device that weighs seven grams and measures two square centimeters) that cyclists carry on their bicycles and that allow them to position them in real time. Racing bikes also provide information to provide the viewer with the most accurate references possible. Thus, on television, the difference that exists between two runners can be seen directly, as happened in the historic victory of Pogacar versus Roglic in the time trial of the penultimate day of the last Tour.
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