Omega Seamaster Olympic Games Collection

A timely perspective. Writer Claudia Cusano

Omega holds the coveted role of official timekeeper for the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This is the 28th time that Omega, part of the Swatch Group, the world’s largest watchmaker, will take on this role. It was to be expected, then, that Omega would produce an Olympiad-themed limited edition. In years past, the timepieces have typically been versions of Omega’s most popular sports watch collections, with details paying tribute to the host city (like the maple leaf–inspired Seamaster Professional for Vancouver in 2010). What was less expected, is the Seamaster Olympic Games Collection for Pyeongchang is five colourways—blue, yellow, black, green, and red—of a new model.

This latest addition to the collection was inspired by the pocket watches built by Omega to time the 1932 games in Los Angeles—its first—with design cues from the dials and stopwatches deployed at both the 1976 Innsbruck winter games and the summer Olympics in Montreal of the same year. The steel case is a simple Seamaster shape and the domed black-and-white dial makes for excellent legibility—bold Arabic numerals, a date display, and a colour-coordinated pulse scale on the dial edge (enabling the wearer to calculate their pulse beats-per-minute). The caseback showcases the Olympic tie-in most with the names of all the games Omega has timed since 1932. (That year, Omega had one technician with 30 high-precision chronographs; in 2018, there are 300 Omega timekeepers with 230 tonnes of equipment.)

Omega’s 100-year term as the official timekeeper continues through to 2032, and for that reason they are producing 2,032 pieces of each colour variant. Soon, the world’s best athletes will be schussing down the slopes, skating across the ice, and zooming down the track, and while some may commemorate the occasion with the Pyeongchang mascots of Soohorang, the white tiger, or Bandabi, the Asiatic black bear, others will be more inclined to select this timely option.

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