CORTINA D'AMPEZZO/LIVIGNO, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Drones have given television viewers worldwide an immersive and almost visceral sensation of the action at the Milano Cortina Olympics - enabling them to sense the athletes' speed, skill and movement close up, and taking the broadcasting to a new level.
FPV, or First Person View, drones have chased skiers down the slopes at 120 kph and hurtled along behind sliders plummeting through the ice canal in the luge and skeleton events, delivering dramatic new angles that bring audiences right up close to the action.
The 15 custom-built FPV drones in use weigh less than 250 grams but cost around 15,000 euros ($18,000) each and are equipped with a camera linked to special goggles worn by the pilot, allowing him or her to see exactly where he is flying.
"It's not like a car where you buy the whole thing. You buy a chassis from someone, a motor from someone else, and then you put together what fits your purpose best," Thomas De Koster, a 27-year-old Dutch engineer who built and pilots the Olympic drones, told Reuters in Cortina.
The biggest risk for the drone pilots is that the footage is filmed live, meaning there's no room for mistakes.
"The shots need to be really good the first time... We need to be very sharp," said Alejandro Petrakovsky, a 36-year-old drone operator from Argentina working in the team in Cortina.
Drones have been used at previous Games, including at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But this is the first time they have been so prevalent in the coverage, including in sliding sports where they fly just centimetres behind the competitors as they speed through the course.
Ahead of the Olympics, FPV drone pilots trained for weeks alongside the athletes, running the courses up to 60 times a day to avoid being intrusive or disturbing them while they race.
"Even though now I can kind of dream the track, every time I dive in I still have to be fully focused - no distractions, no blinking, nothing. Just moving forward and staying focused," said Ralph Hogenbirk, the 35-year-old FPV pilot for luge, skeleton and bobsleigh in Cortina.
"Safety is always first. So if there's any doubt in my mind, I'm not going to make the corner," he added.
DRONES BUZZING
While the drone pilots have been inundated with praise for their skill in controlling the tiny, flying cameras at such speeds, some spectators and viewers have said the noise is distracting.
"In the bobsleigh, we only follow the first three turns where you hear it a little bit in the background and then you don't hear it anymore. So I don't think it's a big distraction... It's becoming part of the broadcasting," Hogenbirk said.
The drones have drawn mixed but mostly relaxed reactions from freestyle skiers and snowboarders competing in the Italian Alpine town of Livigno.
Canadian moguls skier Laurianne Desmarais said the drone at the top of Tuesday's qualifying run was "a bit louder" than those used on the World Cup circuit, though the noise disappeared once she pushed out of the start gate.
"As soon as I hear '3, 2, 1, go!' I block everything out and it's all fine," the 28-year-old said.
Austrian veteran Anna Gasser said she barely noticed the drones during competition, adding that freestyle snowboarders are accustomed to cameras appearing in unusual places.
"We're so used to getting followed and having cameras in weird spots," she said, noting that photographers and drone pilots filming riders often stand on the knuckles of the slope, the flat part at the top of a jump's landing ramp before the steep landing slope the riders aim for.
"A lot of people have headphones in our sport, so we don't care at all."
Gasser also joked that her boyfriend, who flies drones during training, had occasionally hit her with his.
She added with a smile that if one hit her during a competition "I'd hope they'd give me another run!"
Snowboard big air riders also said the drones had little impact on their concentration.
Instead, they voiced a different kind of doubt over using them in their events: New Zealand's Zoi Sadowski‑Synnott said she was unfazed by the machines hovering around but just not convinced by the overhead view they capture.
"I'm just not the biggest fan of the angle of showing snowboard," she said after Monday's big air final.
"With a bird's‑eye view our tricks aren't the best, and it isn't the coolest way to see what we are doing. That's the only thing. Otherwise they are pretty cool."
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(Writing by Sara Rossi, editing by Hugh Lawson)
