Olly Timing eliminates 700 timekeeper shifts at NSW Swimming Championships

December 6, 2024

For the NSW Swimming Championships being held from today until 12th December at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, Swimming NSW has hired Olly Timing to provide backup times for the event - eliminating over six person months of volunteer effort via an estimated 700 timekeeping shifts.

Touchpads at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre will be the primary timing, and Olly Timing’s world first artificial intelligence technology will provide the backup, instead of volunteer timekeepers.

In addition to this huge saving in volunteer effort, Olly Timing’s video replay technology will allow results to be reviewed in case of queries.

Olly Timing has been developed with strong support from Swimming NSW and has successfully recorded over 40,000 times since its launch in February.

Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre is the first in growing list of venues now equipped with this transformational technology.

Olly Timing Founder, Ben Ramsden notes “volunteer timekeepers recorded results for my kids when they swam. I am so pleased that with the support of SNSW we can repay that debt by making timekeeping history”.

The name ‘Olly’ was inspired by an octopus holding a stopwatch in each tentacle. The first logo was designed by swimmer Natasha Ramsden in April 2020.

Olly Timing uses high speed video combined with proprietary advanced AI computer vision software to ‘see’ the starting flash and moment that a swimmer touches the wall at the end of a race.

Video is captured either from dedicated Olly cameras, or via an existing video system such as Hawk-Eye.

Olly Timing software runs on a computer. Operators and trained and accredited.

Touchpads with backup timekeepers is the standard timing solution for many large swim meets. Olly Timing was designed as an alternative to timekeepers.

Olly Timing can also operate alone without touchpads as the primary timing system.

Swimming NSW have confirmed that Olly Timing may be used to record times at official events except to set or break NSW records.

More information on Olly Timing

Image courtesy of Olly Timing.

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