Two years from Lake Traunsee to the Olympics.

Get the umpires the angle they can't get from a boat

In kite racing, the umpires decide on the water, in real time: who touched a mark, who had right of way, who gets a penalty. From an umpire boat, the field is hard to read. From above, it isn't.

That's where we come in. We fly over the course and send a live picture to the umpires. They watch it on a replay system next to the other camera feeds, all synced, and can step through a situation frame by frame. Then they decide, on the spot, penalty or no penalty.

The technology is simple: a drone and a video link. The hard part is the flying. You have to be in the right place before the boats get there, and hold an angle that shows the umpires the whole situation: the mark, both riders, the gap between them.

Traunsee 2022: my first kite race

I flew my first event for the International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) at the KiteFoil World Series on Lake Traunsee in 2022. My friend Benjamin Geislinger, who I studied with and who later founded Levitaz, had been their drone pilot for live streaming and umpiring until then, and he brought me in.

IKA was happy with the work and kept me. From there it was world cups and championships in Sardinia, Calabria, Portsmouth, Hyères, China and Spain.

2023: the Olympic test event

A year before the Games, Benjamin, Markus Schwendner and I went to the Olympic sailing test event in Marseille. The point was to try everything once under real conditions: the course, the radio reception, the wind.

We only fly for kite racing, but we used the week to show the organisers what the same setup can do for all the other Olympic sailing classes.

Five days on site. There wasn't much wind that week, and we spent a lot of time waiting on the water. At the test event we still flew from the shore.

The finals of every sailing event

We were on site for 14 days, from 26 July to 10 August 2024, and the racing ran from 28 July to 8 August. Our home was the kite racing, which ended with the medal series on the last day. But we didn't only fly the kites: we flew the finals of all ten Olympic sailing events.

Digital umpiring wasn't fully part of Olympic sailing yet. We ran it anyway and showed the officials what it can do, so they can decide whether it belongs in the future of the sport.

Only from the boat

At the Olympics the rule was clear: drones fly from the boat, nowhere else. So we built our own charging station on the boat, powered by the boat itself. On long days the engine had to keep running so the boat's battery wouldn't go flat.

Our setup: a DJI Mavic 3 Pro with the DJI RC Pro, a DJI wireless video transmitter, SDI cables down to the umpires, and their own replay system. At our usual events we bring our own replay setup, here the Games had theirs.

Security on another level

Every drone over the venue was registered with the police beforehand, with serial numbers. Before flying, we switched on our controllers and they showed up green on the police screens.

Any drone they couldn't identify quickly, they could take down: jam it, send it back to its take-off point, and see exactly where the pilot was standing. Over the Games they caught quite a few people flying without permission.

Bigger, stricter, and still the same job

Helicopters overhead, the best riders in the world racing right below us, and being part of it live. That was special.

And yet: it was a race like every other one. We did our job, packed up, flew home. The difference was the size, and the rules. Badges for everything. Even borrowing a pair of scissors meant filling out a form and bringing them back.

What it shows

• Every final, flown from a boat. The medal races of all ten sailing events, with a live picture for the umpires.
• Prepared a year ahead. The test event in 2023 meant no surprises in 2024.
• Built what was missing. Nowhere to charge on the water, so we built a charging station on the boat.

The same preparation goes into every world cup I fly, and into your shoot, on the water or on land.