Reading: Which tyres company offers over-view of winter Olympics?

If you’ve managed to catch any of the winer Olympic Games from Vancouver on the TV this week you might have seen some spectacular aerial views of the event.

But did you know they have been captured from the Goodyear tyres company blimp - and if you did, we bet you didn’t know that Goodyear provided its first Olympic coverage almost 88 years ago.

In 1932, the Goodyear blimp Volunteer gave a local radio station a bird’s-eye view of the summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles – starting the first of nine Olympics in which the company would coordinate the aerial views.

Sara Waldman, Goodyear’s airship public relations manager. said: “Goodyear works at the request of the networks and has supported the Olympic Games in Los Angeles twice, Lillehammer, Atlanta, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Turin, Beijing and now Vancouver.

“We’ve used our famous blimps, planes, helicopters and tethered aerostats to provide the aerial views.”

Goodyear has used a variety of aerial camera platforms due to the challenges and limitations of Olympic Winter Games in mountainous regions with heavy snow and ice, explained Waldman.

Goodyear’s coverage of the Vancouver games is being provided by an airplane and a helicopter equipped with high-definition cameras and working with the production teams at the various venues around Vancouver.

For more than 50 years, Goodyear’s blimps have provided aerial coverage of the most watched sports, entertainment and news events around the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 11:35 am and is filed under Blogs, Goodyear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.