The speed and drama that makes alpine skiing events so popular also makes them particularly challenging for the Swiss Timing team. Athletes can reach speeds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour as they travel down a vertical drop that ranges from 180 metres (slalom) to 1,100 metres (downhill) for men and 140 metres (slalom) to 800 metres (downhill) for women. Skiers also have to pass through a series of gates and timing goes down very often to just tiny margins of hundreds of seconds.

Alpine skiers start their runs through a starting gate whose technology ensures that the starting pulse is generated when the wand (or ‘bar’) is at precisely the same angle for every competitor. The control box for the device includes both a main and backup system. From start to finish thanks to the Longines Live Alpine Data (LLAD) sensor system the speed, jump and correlation on various sectors of the athletes can be tracked both live and post live for the entire competition.