There are 10 traditional drones being used and more than two dozen first-person-view drones designed to deliver immersive, athlete-level perspectives.
Updated: 30 minutes agoA drone follows speed skaters competing in the men's 5,000 meters speedskating race at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. LIVIGNO, Italy - They go higher than any aerialist, faster than a downhill skier and send a stronger signal than ever about how the Winter Games want to be seen.
faster, higher, stronger - translating it for the technological age. They sweep across mountain courses and dive into turns once visible only to competitors. In the early days of these Games, the army of drones spread across Northern Italy have provided panoramic views of the Alps while placing viewers closer to the action than ever before, racing alongside luge sliders down icy chutes, trailing skiers at more than 80 mph and hovering near snowboarders and freestyle skiers as they twirl through the air. Their whirring can be heard across outdoor venues, a literal buzz that now accompanies winter sport - and a metaphoric one as audiences marvel at a perspective never before possible. “It brings a whole new element to Olympic sports,” U.S. bobsled pilot Kaillie Armbruster Humphries said. The visuals have drawn widespread admiration. But their proximity to the action has also raised tricky questions: In sports where athletes already operate on the thinnest of margins, are the drones a potential distraction - or even safety hazard - in the most consequential moments of their lives? Armbruster Humphries, a six-time Olympian, said some athletes did have early hesitations. During a World Cup event and training runs in Italy earlier this season, drones were tested along sliding tracks, raising questions about safety.ADVERTISEMENT Through the opening days of these Games, the drones have drawn attention for the new levels of visual storytelling they provide, quickly becoming a talking point among viewers. Several athletes, however, say the cameras have been far more noticeable on screens than they are during competition. Switzerland's Marco Odermatt, flanked by a drone, speeds down the course of an alpine ski men's downhill portion of a team combined race, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Bormio, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. For elite athletes, tuning out distractions is part of the job. They train to narrow their focus, blocking out crowd noise, public-address announcers and the chaos that surrounds them - a kind of competitive tunnel vision that, many say, now extends to flying, buzzing cameras. American snowboarder Maddie Mastro listens to music as she zigzags across the halfpipe, earbuds in either ear - “full blast” - and says the buzzing drone has no impact on her runs, “if they’re flown at a safe distance.” For Avery Krumme, the 17-year old American freestyle skier, the mental shift happens the moment she drops in. She listened to Rihanna as she took the course for Monday’s slopestyle competition but was otherwise locked in on her board beneath and her run in front of her.Others say awareness depends on timing. Swiss freestyle skier Giulia Tanno said the drones are more noticeable at the top of the course or during practice, but tend to disappear once competition begins. “As soon as I drop, I don’t hear,” she said. “I’m just focused.” Still, not all athletes are entirely comfortable with how close the technology can appear. Snowboarders are used to drones following them in the pipe or along race and obstacles courses at big events, like the X Games or an Olympics. American snowboarder Bea Kim, 19, said in some situations, they’ve flown too close to athletes. “I think that might just be because the people who are flying them are somewhere else and they don’t realize how close they are,” Kim said. When drones are flown high enough and down the center of the course, she added, they’re easier to ignore. “We’re kind of in our own head and focusing on our riding.”In 2015, Marcel Hirscher, the Austrian slalom and giant slalom champion, narrowly escaped injury when a camera-carrying drone fell from the sky during a World Cup slalom in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, smashing into the snow just meters behind him as he raced down the course. Hirscher appeared not to notice at the time, but afterward was blunt. “This is horrible,” he said. “This can never happen again. This can be a serious injury.” The incident prompted the International Ski and Snowboard Federation to ban drones for several years, underscoring how little margin for error exists in sports defined by speed and proximity. But the technology has evolved significantly. The drones at these Games are operated by Olympic Broadcasting Services, the IOC’s in-house production arm, which relies on more than 800 cameras to broadcast the Olympics. Of those, OBS has deployed 10 traditional drones and more than two dozen first-person-view drones designed to deliver immersive, athlete-level perspectives. A drone operator prepares to cover the men's 5,000 meters speedskating race at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. Each drone is operated by a three-person team - a pilot, a director and a technician - working in constant communication via a dedicated channel to manage flight paths, timing and technical adjustments, a level of coordination OBS says is designed to prioritize safety while capturing dynamic shots. Pierre Ducrey, the IOC’s sports director, said last week the organization believes the drones can be integrated without interfering with athletes’ performance. “The images you see are innovative, and we make sure they don’t get in the way of performance,” Ducrey said. “It is part of an evolution of technology. Some people are not used to seeing the shadows on the field of play or the noise, but the integration is something we can manage, and the results could be seen over the weekend.” Michael Sheehan, the coordinating director for NBC’s Olympic coverage, called the drone footage a “game changer,” saying drones offer an intimacy that traditional cameras cannot. “When a camera is chasing the athlete down the hill - right in front of them or right behind them - you truly get the sense of how fast they’re going,” Sheehan said. “That’s virtually impossible to capture with a wide shot shooting from the side. The drone coverage takes us to a place we’ve traditionally never been.” He said the shift said has fundamentally changed how speed and difficulty are conveyed on television, a type of visual storytelling that wasn’t possible until very recently. “Traditional sports coverage is perpendicular - cameras shooting as action moves left to right,” Sheehan said. “The drones let us be parallel to the athlete, right in front of them or right behind them, and that changes everything.” Veteran U.S. bobsled pilot Elana Meyers Taylor said she isn’t concerned about the drones, but admitted the perspective can be a lot - even for fellow athletes. She watched some of the early Olympic luge races, which featured a drone buzzing not far from the athletes down the track. “I was like, this is slightly nauseating,” Meyers Taylor said. “I don’t know if I could watch that all the way down the run.”
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