Are there any new technologies being deployed in Turin? These have been tested before, but it's the first time we'll be attaching transponders to each ankle of speed skaters for production use. They'll also be used by athletes on the short [skating] track and biathlon. So for speed skating, there are sensors at the finish line to record the results, but they'll be synchronized with each skater and their transponders.

Bobsledding is the most complicated event to record, since times are measured in milliseconds and not hundredths of seconds like other events.

How does your group support the television broadcasters? Each TV commentator has their own monitor and information from the timing systems to help them sound clever. Behind this cleverness is an application with real-time information, athlete biographies and data from the latest competitions. All of the information is translated into Italian, French and English.

What are your biggest concerns right now? Feb. 10 is right around the corner. We did lots of testing in the past year. In 2005, we did high-level testing and stress testing. Then we did a simulation of the games in October, and we're going to conduct a second simulation this week. Now we have to move from the labs to the sites. Installing equipment at an established site like an ice hockey rink is relatively easy. To install equipment on a mountain that's still in use by the public is the biggest challenge.

How did you go about recruiting people for your team and finding people with related experience? We did a lot of recruitment on our Web site. It wasn't hard finding people who were interested. Our staff is from 16 different countries. Some people have been involved in three, four, even five different [Olympic] Games, like Albertville [in France, in 1992] and Lillehammer [in Norway, in 1994].