How to Track Sports Equipment For The Olympics

Held every four years, the Olympics is an internationally followed sports event with athletes from every part of the globe. The recent Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 saw 2871 athletes compete in 109 events while the last summer Olympic event held in Tokyo had 11,000 athletes perform!

It’s the largest sports event in the world, so things happen on a massive scale. And it’s not just the athletes competing. It’s a sports equipment competition too. Sportsmen bring the highest-quality Olympic equipment along to help them bring gold to their country. Hundreds upon hundreds of containers laden with sports equipment come rushing into the Olympic Village, as was seen when athletes from 205 nations shipped equipment to Tokyo in 2020.

Now, let’s clarify what equipment tracking is. Equipment tracking generally refers to a system or process that incorporates location and status monitoring to maintain valuable assets — Olympic equipment, for example. It ensures that everything from your surfboards to poles to uniforms gets all the way from point A to point B. It works based on the following technologies: RFID tags and QR codes that facilitate real-time tracking of the movement of assets.

Equipment tracking is essential, especially in large events such as the Olympic games when a mass of high-end gear from around the world comes to meet at one place. It will prevent delays, ensure equipment safety, and will not misplace highly expensive sports gear. It also helps with the planning and organisation to make sure athletes get their Olympic equipment on time and without unnecessary complications.

Equipment tracking becomes essential when things are happening on such a massive scale. Every Olympics, athletes from all over the world ship their equipment to reach the event venue before they travel there by air. To make sure every bit of equipment reaches the right place within stipulated deadlines is a mammoth task in itself.

Now there are all kinds of high-performance sports gear being flooded into one place. Surfboards, boats, oars, canoes, and bikes are some of the larger pieces of equipment. Then come combat sports gear including gloves, mats, tatamis and punching bags – heavy athletic list. We’re only starting the list. Poles, balls, guns, darts, skateboards, gloves, rackets, swords, golf clubs, stakes, bars, javelins – we could never fit in all the Olympic equipment here! Name a single sport and you’ll discover a plethora of specialised equipment athletes need for training and the sport itself.

Moreover, there are uniforms and apparel for all athletes. Shoes, shorts, shirts, jumpers, jackets, pants, socks, caps and helmets, thousands of all of them! Now of all what we’ve mentioned above is pretty expensive sports equipment, and most of all, it all needs to reach its destination safe and sound so there are no inconveniences for the Olympians. How do you suppose all of this is managed? How to keep track of the Olympics, actually? Using sports equipment software, of course.

Transporting thousands of pieces of high-end Olympic equipment to their respective destinations requires a robust equipment tracking solution that can help the logistics teams get the job done with minimal slip-ups. The team must be able to keep an eye on every piece of Olympic equipment from the moment it lands on the shipping ports to the athlete’s changing rooms or training areas where they expect to find their gear upon arrival. 

The team managing all this needs a state-of-the-art software solution that lets supervisors collaborate with on-ground workers seamlessly to ensure everything is done right. itemit is a brilliant sports equipment asset management solution for all these problems.

itemit is essentially an equipment tracking software that lets teams carry out asset tracking and day-to-day asset-related activities with ease. When it comes to Olympic equipment, sports gear are actually the assets you have to look after. 

We have a sports equipment management app and web portal that lets teams track, share and collaborate on every relevant detail about every piece of equipment conveniently. itemit lets you create unique asset profiles for each item and then log its important information like current location, destination, ID, the responsible logistics team member, and even the specific athlete it belongs to. All in all, every relevant bit of information needed can be accessed from our equipment tracking software at any time.

To better track track equipment list itemit offers an inexpensive solution to give a unique identity to every part of sports gear that has to be tracked. A simple QR code can be pasted discreetly onto an Olympic games equipment, and then scanned with a smartphone camera. Yes — that simple! The person scanning an asset can add the relevant details of the asset and update it on the online register.

Now, each time a team member scans the asset tag, the equipment’s location is automatically updated in the asset tracking software. This is a brilliant way to track Olympic equipment on the move to make sure it’s headed to the right place.

itemit’s equipment check-out software enhances further layers of convenience and precision in regard to inventory management. Checking in and out assets is quite easy since every single movement becomes traceable by the logistics teams. The intuitive system of Itemit means that managers can assign the responsibility for each piece of Olympic Equipment to particular team members and track its location as it moves between storage, transport, and use by athletes.

Such a check-out system comes in quite handy during events like the Olympics, where hundreds of items need tracking and accounting constantly. It lets the logistics teams log which equipment is in use, by whom, and when it is due back. This kind of granularity in tracking avoids losses, misplacements, or delays that could disturb an athlete’s performance owing to their gears.

Moreover, the system from itemit is cloud-based, meaning that all the information about check-out and check-in regarding equipment is available to any authorised user wherever he may be in the world. In this way, different teams working at a site or remotely from their homes will be able to cooperate fully in the management of every piece of Olympic equipment.

All tracking activities are held on an online database that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. This means logistic supervisors, managers, on-ground logistics workers and all stakeholders can keep an eye on the equipment wherever they are. For instance, if a team has just dropped the Chinese delegations’ swimming equipment to their hotel or training area, all concerned personnel are informed in real-time.

itemit offers world-class asset tracking functionalities to a range of industry-leading firms around the world. Our asset tracking software is specifically designed to streamline business operations no matter what scale they’re on. 

itemit is extremely scalable. Our Pro and Unlimited plans offer unlimited users so you can scale things up with ease. If you’re interested, please reach out to us at team@itemit.com to find more about how itemit can help you with your asset tracking needs.

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