As bullets fly, Ralph Kleinekath枚fer keeps (perfect) time for Olympic biathlon
| Whistler Olympic Park, British Columbia
I鈥檝e been to half a dozen biathlon competitions so far at these Games and I still have a hard time figuring out exactly who is shooting in which lane, whether they hit their targets, and how far back they are from the leader.
Which makes me all the more impressed with Ralph Kleinekathofer. His coworkers affectionately dub him 鈥淟ord of the Targets.鈥�
It鈥檚 his job to man the incredible web of wires and tiny computers located behind each target 鈥� and human volunteers backstopping them 鈥� are properly representing what鈥檚 happening on the range.
鈥淚f you try to automate it, would work 99.9 percent of the time,鈥� said Kleinekathofer, who鈥檚 been at the job 20 years. 鈥淚f, for example, a skier went in the wrong lane, automatic system wouldn鈥檛 do the right thing. It鈥檚 like an airplane without a pilot 鈥� in case of emergency it won鈥檛 work.鈥�
Kleinekathofer is part of a small army of very important officials here working for Omega, which handles the timing system of the Olympics. The 220 timekeeping professionals and engineers, backed up by 290 local volunteers and 250 tons of timekeeping equipment, are a major advancement from OMEGA鈥檚 debut at the 1936 Olympics in Germany, where timekeeping consisted of one guy and 27 stopwatches.
Today, when TV broadcasters and viewers expect live coverage 鈥� especially in Europe, where it has become the most popular winter sport on TV 鈥� timekeepers like Kleinekathofer have to manage not only race-day logistics, but also how to relay what鈥檚 happening in real-time to international viewers.
In biathlon, that means showing not only the times, but a graphical representation of which athletes are hitting their targets. Each of the five targets are represented by a black circle that turns white when they shoot.
鈥淚t really must be in the same time as you see finger pull trigger,鈥� says Kleinekathofer, surrounded by two laptops and a labyrinth of wires.
In biathlon, skiers must hit a target the size of a grapefruit from half a football field away during the standing phase of shooting, and a target the size of a golf ball when they're lying done in the "prone" position. For each target they miss, they must either ski a penalty lap or suffer a time penalty 鈥� depending on the event.
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