Cross-country skiing: Drone camera appears over Swedish skiers during Tour de Ski sprint

In the middle of the festivities at the Tour de Ski, a drone suddenly appeared.

The drone tucked in right behind the stars on the track and never left their backs, acting as a special camera that followed the racers for the entire loop during Sunday’s sprint opener.

“I heard or saw nothing when I was racing. But I saw it when others were out there,” said Sweden’s Moa Ilar.

Teammate Moa Lundgren appreciated the technological solution.

“It’s nice when you’re watching to see the whole course. You can pick up things from that,” she said. Lundgren added that she didn’t notice it herself while skiing: “I don’t even hear people cheering sometimes, so I definitely didn’t hear the drone.”

The star-studded stage race Tour de Ski is traditionally surrounded by heavy media coverage, and this season’s opener added the drone camera to the broadcast toolkit to track athletes closely around the course.