With the Alpine Ski Championship Season Opener taking place on the slopes of the Rettenbach Glacier in Solden, Austria later this month, local broadcaster, ORF is aiming to bring a number of technical innovations to the coverage.
As host broadcaster for Fédération Internationale de Ski et de Snowboard (FIS), the Alpine Ski World Cup may see – pending trials taking place now – innovations on sound and interactivity.
One exciting innovation from ORF that may be trialled live at Solden if it is ready, then at Kitzbühel for the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup race, Hahnenkamm World Cup Races, and elsewhere, will be an audio innovation.
Red Bull mic
Working as a joint venture between ORF, Red Bull Mediahouse and FIS, the team is trying to get the sound of the athletes as they compete into the broadcast by creating a mic that can be worn on the slopes without impeding competitors’ movement.
Michael Kögler, ORF head of directors, explains why this project is important: “The new thing we are testing here is another push on the sound side. We have a project which we are really working hard on. We have really a lot of cameras on all these sites, but to my mind, the thing that is missing to give the broadcast an extra push is the real sound of the athletes.
“There is a new technology now which we are working together with Red Bull Lab, which they used at the surfing. They had to integrate a mic into some tools for the surfers. Normally in surfing you have no sound from the athletes if it’s in the tube in the water. But they were able to deliver this thing for some special occasions and so we came into contact with Red Bull to try to do this for snow sports. It’s a lot of technology, a lot of involvement, a lot of stuff also from the FIA’s side to get the athletes to wear it.
“Now we are using the mic technology, but integrating this into the athlete’s helmet and try to really get the original sound, the breathing of the racer, of the athlete. If this works I think this will be a really big step to make all these broadcasts even more impressive than they are right now.”
The mic is currently being tested by Red Bull athletes. As soon as trials are successful, ORF will bring it to the slopes and its broadcasts for further testing, hopefully at Solden.
Team radio
Another project ORF is working on with FIS is to integrate more of the ski team radio communications into the broadcast. Kögler explains: “The other thing is also a project with FIS. We are trying to integrate more of the team radio into our broadcasts. Now we are doing a lot of team radio, which we record, but also want to go a little bit further into the action to make it more understandable, because if a Norwegian talks, nobody knows what the Norwegian is talking about, so we want to have a popup in English so that everybody should be able to understand what the guy is talking about. This is also under development, which we will try and if it works, it will pop up in time for Kitzbühel.”
One more innovation that ORF is working on the development of is a 360 degree virtual reality (VR) tool so that people at home can go into certain areas of the course to have a real look around and get a feel for the venue. This involves the integration of permanent 360 degree cameras at various points around the course.
The Alpine Ski Championship Season Opener takes place on the weekend of 26 to 27 October on the Rettenbach Glacier in Solden, Austria
