Buzz of the Olympics: How drone cams deliver high-pace visuals and add a new dynamic for TV viewers

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Standing on a tower overlooking the cliffs of the Cortina downhill course, there is someone who is just as involved in the biggest skiing races of the Winter Olympics as Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson.

Martin Bochatay is the drone cam pilot for the money shots inside the iconic Tofana schuss, the narrow chute between two walls of Dolomite rock.

He is part of a team in control of the buzzing machines that are flying right behind Olympians as they go for gold at the Milan Cortina Games, offering stunning and high-pace visuals to TV viewers back home.

“In my mind, I’m not flying a drone. I’m flying with the skiers,” Bochatay told The Associated Press before the Olympics. “It’s an immersive thing. … The skiers don’t see us. But I’m right there with them. You become the drone.”

Drone cams have become ubiquitous in showcasing the speeds and angles of skiers, lugers, snowboarders, ski jumpers and other Winter Olympians at these Games.

“The skill of those drone pilots is just phenomenal,” U.S. bobsledder and flag bearer Frank Del Duca said. “It gets a really unique perspective.”

Viewers have noted the humming noise coming from the machines, sparking the question: Is it putting off the Olympians in the biggest moment of their lives? Norwegian downhiller Kajsa Vickhoff Lie says that’s not an issue.

“No, you just maybe hear them on the start, but you don’t hear them when you ski,” she said.

Drone cams made in inauspicious impact on Alpine skiing 11 years ago when a primitive, massive machine came crashing down from the sky and nearly smashed into Austrian great Marcel Hirscher during a slalom race.

These days, the drones are agile, tiny — they weigh around half a pound (250 grams) — and can easily accelerate to speeds beyond 100 mph (more than 170 kph).

In all the sports, there are rules preventing the drones from overtaking the athletes, and they must keep a safe distance behind the competitors.

The drones actually contain two cameras. There’s a high-quality camera for broadcast purposes that is actually controlled by the TV production unit in a truck below the course.

“They can adjust whether it’s too bright, the balance, without us doing anything,” Bochatay said.

Then there’s a lower-quality camera that the pilots use to see where they are going. Those are the images that the pilots see in the goggles they wear to fly the drones.

The pilots have a remote control that requires two hands to hold, and contains two main switches to input the flying commands of pitch (front-to-back), roll (side-to-side) and yaw (vertical axis); plus throttle (up/down or altitude control).

“There’s always these four,” Bochatay said. “It’s not like you move one then the other. It’s everything at the same time.”

There’s also a low-tech issue: the batteries for the drones need to be changed constantly — and kept in warming cases due to the cold temperatures — requiring a “pit stop crew” to quickly sub in new batteries between runs.

Two things were important to Olympic broadcasting officials: Showing off both the beauty of the venues and the point of view of the athlete.

And the International Olympic Committee is delighted with the results as they look to bring viewers closer to the action. Maybe too close.

“Looking at the screen in the downhill, I almost feel motion sickness,” said Pierre Ducrey, the IOC’s sports director. “That’s how much we are able to project ourselves thanks to this new way of broadcasting the sport.”

U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor agreed.

“I’m not concerned about the drone or anything like that,” she said, “but I will say I was watching the luge footage the other day and I was like, ‘This is slightly nauseating.’ I don’t know if I could watch this all the way down the run.”

Lie, the Norwegian skier, likes how the drones showcase a key aspect of skiing: It’s cool to see the speed a little bit more for the spectators.”

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AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics