The Netherlands has dominated Milan’s ice rinks, scooping six speed skating gold medals at the Winter Olympic Games.

Given the country’s strength in both long-track and short-track speed skating, it’s no surprise that national broadcaster NOS has focused on capturing the action at the Milano Ice Skating Arena (short track) and the Milano Speed Skating Stadium (long track).

“Comparing the two, the Summer Olympics is bigger in terms of the number of sports, but for us in terms of audience the Winter Games is bigger. For us, the focus is really on speed skating and then short track speed skating as well,” said NOS technical lead Martijn Swart.

Speaking with SVG Europe at the IBC in Milan the day after Jutta Leerdam won gold and set an Olympic record in the 1000m, Swart outlined the public service broadcaster’s remote-first, hybrid production model, spanning three Milan venues, the IBC and NOS’ production facilities in the Netherlands.

With speed skating the priority, NOS operates a full OB setup via Gravity Media Netherlands (using a truck from Gravity Italy) at the Milano Speed Skating Stadium. This includes a presentation platform inside the stadium with two cameras, two trackside cameras, two mixed-zone cameras and an RF camera, enabling NOS to build its own coverage around the OBS world feed.

“We take five cameras from the host, plus the individual graphics feed, and usually the multi clip feed and the international television signal they provide,” said Swart.

“The base is always the host world feed. It depends on what type of race it is, but if you have the 10km or 5km you have time to switch your own cameras in between, so we can focus on our athletes and really make it a Netherlands-only feed.

“But 500 metres is so fast, so you can’t break away from the from the actual race. For example, we saw that there was a race that came in between Femke Kok and Jutta Leerdam, so we can use that moment to focus on the person who’s waiting, so we can really make it into an orange feed.”

For short track, the aim of providing viewers with a Netherlands-tailored output is the same, but achieved slightly differently, with coverage produced remotely from a small gallery at the IBC.

“We do the same thing for short track, but it’s obviously a different – smaller – venue. We have the presentation platform, and we make our own unilateral signal from that in a similar way.”

The third Milan location is Team NL House, where NOS has another presentation setup.

“There are celebrations there every day; all the athletes, families of the teams, spectators – all the all the fans go there. And whenever a medal’s been won, they’ll celebrate there and be awarded another time.

“We have a little presentation studio there, and we do all kinds of interviews, because all the athletes and former athletes are there, so for us it’s a location where you can find most of the interesting people you want to interview.”

Team NL House is also produced remotely from the IBC, using the same gallery as short track.

Alongside the remote gallery for short track and Team NL House, NOS’s IBC operation includes an MCR for line checking and signal routing, plus a video coordination gallery that decides which sports are sent to the Netherlands.

The 44 incoming feeds from host broadcaster OBS are funnelled into around 10 outgoing feeds to Hilversum, where the Winter Olympics show is mainly produced.

“Where we do speed skating or short track, we basically take over the show, and we do all that from here, yeah. And then when the sports done, we go back to Hilversum. They cover all the other sports.”

While the focus is on skating in Milan, NOS also has a few self-supporting, LiveU-equipped crews in Cortina.

“We support them from Hilversum,” said Swart. “We can send them content, but they basically finalise their own edits and send back to Hilversum, and it can be played out from there. And they can either go to Hilversum on LiveU, or if needed, they can also go to the speed skating arena for a live link as well.

“With LiveU, my philosophy is always that you want to send it to the final destination where it needs to go. We (in the IBC) can be in the middle as an MCR, but, but it always adds a layer, so I don’t see the point. What we try to do here is come up with a workflow that is very similar to what everyone is used to back in Hilversum, so all the people that come here, they know the workflow that’s in place during the year, and we basically extend it so it feels like they are back in Hilversum.

“Remote editing is another example. All the content is based in Hilversum, and all the edit suites that we have here in the IBC and speed skating at Team NL and everywhere, they’re basically remote edits in Hilversum, so they all use the same content. If one editor is busy, somebody else can take over, and it can be here or in Hilversum, or wherever. So the way they’re used to working in Hilversum is the same here. So it makes the transition to Milan quite easy.”

Other suppliers include Broadcast Rental, which kitted out the IBC and supplied cameras for Team NL House and short track, plus Telstra for connectivity between the venues and the Netherlands.

“A lot that we do is based on previous experience, but obviously it changes between Games, because technology changes and we can do more remotely. We all need to cut costs at some point, and one of the ways to cut costs is obviously to do more remote, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve. But some things you just really need to be on site to give them the proper attention that you want them to have.

“We try to prepare a lot in advance, and that’s a lot based on experience that you have. The editorial team has certain wishes, and then the creativity starts bubbling! So they might come up with all kinds of things you haven’t thought of, and that’s what we constantly try to accommodate while we’re here. All of the companies we work with – Broadcast Rental, Gravity, Telstra – they are all really flexible, so it means that if we have an idea or we want to change something, they are always able to accommodate.”