An ITU Delegation has been taking part in the working sessions of the ORIS (Olympic Results and Information Services) taking place in Montreux (Switzerland). The three-day meeting, focussed on discussions and tests for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in October, was joined also by Atos, Omega and Tokyo 2020.

The ORIS project was established at the Sydney 2000 Games, with the idea of setting the standards of all the information and results related with the Olympic Games, from how the information should be collected, presented and distributed to the different transmission routes: printed reports, web pages, INFO, scoreboards, etc.

The ITU participated in the working group since its inception and has been cooperating with all the stakeholders in setting up the principles of how the information should be collected and distributed, using as a reference the practices already in place on all ITU events.

In preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games and Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic games, ITU continues working as part of the group trying to define best practices and more effective ways of implementing the new technologies to deliver better results.

This meeting of the ORIS project was to discuss the evolution of the sport and the information needs since the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and to continue working towards Tokyo 2020, and also to do a test of the services that will be in place for Buenos Aires. As some samples of the measures already tested, the working group continues working in the line of reducing the consumption of paper so that all reports will exist as pdf documents and will be printed only at the request of the interested user.

Also, there will be more comments on incidents in the race than previously (race facts), similar to what ITU is currently doing in the live coverage of the WTS. The different states of the penalties (pending, served, subject to appeal, etc.) have also been clarified. The use of the image of the athlete’s headshot during sports presentations and results on a screen will also be implemented.

The delegation from ITU consisted on Thanos Nikopoulos, in charge of all the technical operations for Tokyo 2020; David Bonilla, specialized in the reports of entries, results, etc.; Alberto Marquez, real-time data management expert and it was coordinated by Enrique Quesada.