Winter Olympics: Bbc Goes Big on Turin Games

The BBC announced plans yesterday for more than 100 hours of coverage of the Winter Olympics, promising additional interactive and broadband options and revolutionary new technology.

All the TV coverage of the 17-day games from Turin will be shown on BBC2 with extensive daytime and mid-evening programmes. Roly Keating, controller of BBC2, said: "It is the first time in 12 years that we'll be in the same time zone, so audiences will be able to enjoy the action as it happens, in prime time."

The highlight of the last Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was the gold medal-winning performance of Britain's women's curling team, which attracted 5.6m viewers around midnight. With British competitors having only modest medal aspirations, the BBC is not expecting similar figures but believes the Games will reach a large audience through four additional interactive screens, which will offer digital viewers 500 hours of live programming.

On the BBC's Winter Olympics website broadband users will be able to choose from five channels showing simultaneous coverage from different events. Roger Mosey, BBC sport director, said: "Headline audiences will be driven by gold medals, which depends on events. But people are watching sport in increasingly different ways - and the broadband coverage is a powerful tool for people to catch up while they are at work and we expect to break records with these games."

Broadband coverage received 80,000 hits during the Athens Olympics two years ago but the recent semi-final of the football world club championship in Japan involving Liverpool had 200,000 broadband viewers. Mosey said 100,000 watched last year's tennis showdown in Basle between Tim Henman and Andrew Murray on broadband, while two million watched on BBC2.

The games will mark the introduction of a new innovation in sports broadcasting - StroMotion. It analyses rapid movement, so an object is seen as a series of static images along its trajectory. The BBC says StroMotion tracks an athlete's movement, technique, execution and tactics over space and time.

For an ice skater's jump it would show the technique and quality of execution, highlighting preparation, elevation, inclination and straightness of the body.