The ongoing battle between FIS, the Austrian Ski Federation, SIEMENS, and Swatch finally ended this week when Swatch announced they would be violating their contractual obligations to FIS and its Federations for the 4th time this season, withdrawing from FIS alpine World Cup completely.
My group (ALGE / SIEMENS) showed up at Altenmarkt Zauchansee last week to do TIMING under our contract with the OSV (Austrian Ski Federation). Once again, as with Soelden in October, Swatch attempted to blackmail OSV into having Swatch perform both TIMING and DATA. OSV simply told Swatch to go home, because ALGE / SIEMENS were prepared to execute both TIMING and DATA in the wake of Swatch's previous blackmail attempt 2 days before Soelden. After listening to Swatch's latest blackmail demands, OSV denied SWATCH race credentials and hotel rooms, and told them to get lost.
FIS threatened the OSV with cancellation of the Altenmarkt race over this action, but FIS didn't have the balls to pull the trigger on its most powerful and successful Federation, and the races went off as planned.
ALGE / SIEMENS flawlessly executed both TIMING and DATA for the womens Super-G and slalom in Altenmarkt, thus taking away Swatch's final argument, consisting of "nobody else has the ability to do it". Furthermore, ALGE / SIEMENS used a TV graphics "look" designed by Austrian TV (ORF), which utilized animated fly-ons and a much more technically sophisticated solution than Swatch's.
ORF and SIEMENS were thrilled with the two broadcasts from Altenmarkt.
Two days later, Swatch pulled the DATA-handling services they are contractually obligated to perform for the remainder of the alpine World Cup season, leaving the remaining non-Austrian World Cups twisting in the wind.
Whether or not FIS and the Federations affected by Swatch's contractual violation (CRO, SUI, ITA, GER, SWE, FRA, SLO) will sue Swatch over tis brazen tactic remains to be seen. Stay tuned.
Francesco Cattaneo of the FIS IT department is personally assembling a team to do TIMING and DATA for St. Moritz on Friday Dec 17. With only two days notice, we wish him luck. After having myself written the data-handling software for Soelden in two days as a result of Swatch's first blackmail attempt of the season, I am uniquely qualified to say it's a BITCH.
ALGE / SIEMENS are of course doing both TIMING and DATA for all the upcoming Austrian World Cup events (Flachau, Semmering, Schladming) as per our contract with the OSV.
Beyond the above-mentioned events, the entire World Cup is up in the air.
For those of you who are thinking about buying Swatch timing equipment or dealing with any of the Swatch brands (Omega, Longines) in any sporting context, you might re-think the wisdom of dealing with a company which thinks nothing about tearing up contracts and hanging customers with live televised events out to dry on two days notice.
Swatch has done this so far to both Soelden and St. Moritz, and also did the same (with only two weeks notice) to Lake Louise, Aspen, and Beaver Creek. Swatch subsequently decided to show up to honor their contracts for Aspen, Vail, and Beaver Creek after their blackmail demands were met by FIS and the event organizers.
For those of you who read the ill-researched, factually incorrect, and possibly libelous article concerning the happenings in Soelden on skiracing.com in October, these new facts and happenings certainly expose SkiRacing.com's errors and editorial foibles. Notice that SkiRacing.com has published nothing about this latest chapter, despite extensive coverage in the French- and German-speaking European press.
Our World Cup setup consists of the following, most of which is available from Phoenix Sports, ALGE distributor for the United States:
Primary time bases: ALGE S4
Backup time bases: ALGE Timy and TDC8000
Timing software: DTK, by Broder's Skunkware
Data-Handling software: SIEMENS
Commentator Information Systems: SIEMENS
ALGE custom multi-channel optocouplers (not available to the public)
ALGE start clocks, photocells, headsets, and headset amps
ALGE full-color video scoreboard (not yet available to the public, but in the works)
ALGE GAZ displays
Technical Director: Ted Savage
Management: Albert Vetter, ALGE Sports Timing
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