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Lateral Linking at Beijing Olympics 2008

The Beijing 2008 Olympics saw Lateral Linking Broadcast providing a wide range of services together with on site equipment installation and management to bring pictures of the sailing and rowing events to a global audience.

Greg Roberts was appointed as technical manager for the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting organisation and was responsible for all technical aspects for the sailing broadcast.

His duties included negotiations with the Chinese army, navy, air force and police for access and management of radio spectrum. He also undertook logistical liaison with the venue committee and was responsible for the technical interfacing for timing, data, and feeds to cable television and rights holders.

As well as race coverage Lateral Linking also supervised the technical facets of the award ceremonies.

On the water the company oversaw the signals and communications for cameras on the competitor’s craft, the chase boats and support vehicles.

Additional responsibilities included the summaries crew and equipment for races at the other five yachting courses not given live coverage.

In his project management role Greg ensured the technical reliability of communications and signals to and from rights holders such as BBC crews who were on location with live broadcasts using their own hosts.

Rowing coverage:
The Olympic rowing featured a FlyCam system that provided viewers with innovative overhead camera shots that followed competitors down the course.

Lateral Linking Broadcast installed and operated a High Definition wireless link to transmit images from the moving camera to the event control room.