Alibaba’s Olympics commercial is a nine-minute tribute to the determination of women to compete in world sports. A footnote at the end of the film, a statement by IOC President and former Olympic fencing champion, Thomas Bach, outlines the role of the Oympics in fostering equality and acceptance. The film is also a nine-minute tribute Alibaba’s cloud-based AI, which was used to colourise and restore vintage photographs of female athletes from past Olympic Games.

The film records the stories of how women have overcome intense pressure to be counted as world class athletes – defying bans for them to compete, ignoring sexism, overcoming prejudice. Featured athletes include tennis player, Suzanne Lenglen from France; Chinese shooter, Zhang Shan; marathon runner, Kathrine Switzer from the US and Cuban shotput athlete, Yumileidi Cumbá. Female athletes represented just 2.2% of all athletes in Paris 1900, when women first competed in the modern Olympics, to 50% at the current Olympic Games Paris 2024.

Alibaba Group’s worldwide partnership with the IOC began in 2017. Its Cloud division has been supporting the digitalisation of the Olympics with cloud technologies ever since and this year, Alibaba Cloud is partnering with the IOC to use its cloud-based AI to transform sports archiving by revitalising historical moments from Paris 1924.

While the overall effect of Alibaba’s film, To The Greatness of Her, is to inspire with its portrayal of the will to conquer adversity and underline the efforts of the IOC to support women in sport, Ogilvy’s Olympics film for Alibaba Cloud is more direct in its purpose of showing off the capabilities of Alibaba Cloud.

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