For decades, Olympic broadcasts have relied on fixed rigs, cable cams, and helicopters to capture the speed of winter sports. This year, that lineup got a new addition, and it looked nothing like the rest of the coverage.
A New Camera Angle for the World’s Biggest Stage
At the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, organizers deployed 25 drones as part of the broadcast package, including 15 first-person-view (FPV) units flying across nearly every outdoor discipline and select indoor events like speed skating. FPV drones covered alpine skiing, snowboard big air, and the sliding sports, following luge and skeleton athletes down the icy chute at speeds that would be impossible for a chase camera on rails. Figure skating, hockey, and curling were the only events left off the list, largely because the tight, enclosed venues leave little room for a drone to maneuver safely around athletes and officials.
The result was a visibly different kind of shot: low, fast, and moving with the athlete rather than watching from a fixed position. Viewers got a sense of speed and proximity that stationary cameras and even helicopter shots have never quite delivered at a Winter Games.
The Hardware Behind the Shot
The units flown at Milano Cortina were custom-engineered “cinewhoops,” a class of small, ducted FPV drone built for close, controlled flying rather than long-range speed runs. Despite weighing just 243 grams, they’re capable of exceeding 140 km/h (roughly 90 mph), fast enough to stay with a luge sled for the length of a run. Their inverted, pusher-style propeller layout improves aerodynamic stability at that speed, which matters when the drone is flying inches from a course wall or an athlete’s flight path.
Each drone was operated by a three-person team: a pilot flying the aircraft in real time through FPV goggles, a director calling shots and framing, and a technician managing the aircraft and signal. That crew structure, more akin to a camera department than a typical drone operation, is a good indicator of how seriously broadcasters are now treating FPV as a primary storytelling tool rather than a novelty insert.
From Olympic Rings to Film Sets
None of this is unfamiliar territory for scripted production. FPV drones have already found their way into major action sequences, from Michael Bay’s “Ambulance” to entries in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, precisely because they can execute camera moves that no crane, cable cam, or traditional aerial platform can match: threading through tight spaces, matching a vehicle’s speed at ground level, and whipping between obstacles in a single continuous take.
What the Olympics demonstrated at scale is how far the hardware and the operating discipline around it have matured. Sub-250-gram cinewhoops with real-time obstacle awareness, flown by dedicated three-person crews under strict safety protocols, are now reliable enough to be trusted with live, unscripted, high-stakes coverage in front of a global audience. That’s a meaningfully higher bar than a single controlled take on a closed set.
What Production Teams Should Take Away
For production companies, the Olympic deployment is a useful preview of where client expectations are heading. Directors and agencies who watched FPV drones trail skeleton athletes down an icy track at 90 mph now have a concrete reference point for what’s possible, and they’ll increasingly ask for it by name. Building in-house FPV capability, or a reliable relationship with pilots who fly it well, is quickly moving from a creative differentiator to a standard line item on production bids for anything involving speed, action, or a sense of motion. The technology proved itself on the biggest stage available. The question for production companies now is how quickly they can put it to work on their own sets.
