When chronographs arrived in the Olympics in the early 20th century, they set new precedents for accurate timing. Before the 1912 Olympics, judges of each discipline used their own stopwatches, often supplied by different brands, which led to many inaccuracies with timing results. In 1912, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced an official timekeeper. For the first time, chronographs were used to accurately record times in athletics down to one-hundredth of a second. The Chrono-Classic collection pays tribute to some of the ground-breaking, British Olympic gold medallists from the 1912 games in Stockholm.
Named after Sidney Swann, the only Cambridge member in the Great Britain Men’s Eight Rowing team that took gold in 1912. Swann was the first Manx person to win an Olympic Gold, a feat unmatched for a hundred years.