Swatch Group’s Omega business has endured shocking luck with postponements, controversy and simple indifference afflicting its flagship partnerships with the Olympic Games and James Bond.
Stablemate Longines will be hoping for better fortune this year with its Official Timekeeper status for the Commonwealth Games.
The omens are good.
While the Winter Olympics in China attracted more coverage for lack of snow, political interference and dodgy plumbing than elite sport and precision timekeeping, the Commonwealth Games take place in Birmingham this summer, and England is one of the most open countries in the world from a political and pandemic point of view.
Moreover, the Commonwealth Games are strongly associated with The Queen, who is celebrating her Platinum Jubilee this year.
That is likely to make the Commonwealth Games interesting to more than just a group of former British Empire countries.
Omega, correctly, takes a long term view of its headline partnerships, and the postponement of the summer games in Japan and the debacle of the winter games in China are a mere blip in an association that has endured for a century.
Longines partnership with the Commonwealth Games is also longstanding, having begun in 1962 and is contracted to last until at least 2030.
HydroConquest XXII Commonwealth Games
A new HydroConquest watch has been created to mark its Official Timekeeper status with the Birmingham 2022 event — the HydroConquest XXII Commonwealth Games, limited to 2,022 numbered pieces.
The sporty 41mm steel-on-steel dive-style watches are water resistant to 300 meters.
They adopt signature colors of blue, green and yellow from the Games logo in the numbers on a 60 minute unidirectional ceramic bezel, which frames a black sunray dial.
Inside, the watch is powered by an exclusive self-winding movement with silicon balance-spring.
