FPV Drones Steal the Show at the Winter Olympics

If you have been watching the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games and suddenly felt like you were riding inside a human missile on ice, no worries, nothing is wrong with your TV.

That swooping, breath stealing, borderline illegal looking camera move is not a superhero with a steadicam. It is an FPV drone doing laps at Olympic speed, buzzing through corners like it forgot to read the safety briefing.

OBS is reportedly using around 25 FPV drones across events like downhill skiing, luge, skeleton, bobsleigh, and even speed skating. These are not polite background cameras. These are full send flying eyeballs.

FPV drones go full send on ice

The International Olympic Committee is not treating this like a tech demo you show once and quietly retire. IOC Sports Director Pierre Ducrey summed it up perfectly when he said this is an evolution of sport, and he is right. Viewers now expect to feel the speed, the risk, and the chaos, especially at the Olympics where subtlety goes to die.

FPV drones are now baked directly into the broadcast setup, not sprinkled in for flavor. On ice tracks where athletes push past 100 kilometers per hour, fixed cameras and cable cams simply cannot keep up. FPV drones chase athletes through turns, down straights, and into your living room with zero regard for your heart rate.

Of course, some viewers noticed the sound. That angry mosquito noise you hear is not your TV. That is a drone screaming through frozen air.

Does it affect the athletes? That question is still floating around like a loose prop nut, but so far nobody seems distracted enough to miss a corner. These athletes are already doing physics defying things in skin tight suits. A little buzzing probably does not register.

Meet the custom FPV broadcast beast

Despite DJI being the undisputed heavyweight champion of the drone world, the Olympics went custom for this one. The FPV drones used by OBS are not off the shelf toys. They are purpose built broadcast machines, developed by the Dutch team Dutch Drone Gods, which is already the most intimidating production company name imaginable.

Their FPV Broadcast Drone weighs just 243 grams, which is about the weight of a very nervous hamster. It can hit speeds up to 100 kilometers per hour and fly for roughly five minutes, which in FPV terms is an eternity when every second feels like threading a needle at highway speed.

The drone transmits native HD HDR video using a high end COFDM system that plugs straight into traditional broadcast infrastructure. Translation: this thing talks fluently with OB trucks, shading systems, and grumpy broadcast engineers who do not like surprises.

Interestingly, this drone did not start its life on ice. Earlier versions were built to chase mountain bike riders during UCI World Cup races. For Cortina, it was adapted to survive cold temperatures, icy environments, and speeds that make most drones question their life choices.

Different sports use different FPV teams and drones, ranging from 2.5 inch to 7 inch builds, but almost all of them share similar camera and transmission tech. In total, about 25 FPV drones are active during the Games, which is either amazing or terrifying depending on how much you trust lithium batteries.

FPV pilots might be Olympic athletes too

Safety is the quiet hero of this story. At just 243 grams, the risk profile is dramatically lower than earlier camera drones. That matters, especially when you remember incidents like the 2015 World Cup slalom crash in Madonna di Campiglio, where a heavy drone nearly collected Marcel Hirscher like an unwanted autograph.

Flying these shots is not casual joystick fun. It is relentless precision under pressure. FPV pilot ShaggyFPV described it as the hardest job he has ever done, flying in tight spaces up to fifty times per session, with zero margin for error. Imagine doing that while knowing millions of people are watching live and Twitter is sharpening its knives.

At this point, FPV flying at this level looks like a sport in itself. It sits right at the intersection of technology, reflexes, nerves, and controlled panic. The pilots are invisible, but the difficulty is very real, and the results speak for themselves.

DroneXL’s Take

This is what modern sports broadcasting should look like. FPV drones are not replacing traditional cameras, they are adding adrenaline straight into the signal chain. Yes, they buzz. Yes, they are close. And yes, that is exactly why they work.

The Milano Cortina Winter Games feel faster, sharper, and more intense than ever, and FPV drones are a big reason why. If this is the future of live sports, buckle up, because the camera is no longer watching the action, it is racing it.

Photo credit: DDG