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Information Sheet - Deciding the Winners

Stopwatches

Timing was first introduced in the 1912 Stockholm Games with the use of hand-operated mechanical stopwatches. As these depended on human judgement and reactions, to click on a start/stop button with the thumb or finger, their accuracy was limited to 1/5th of a second. This might not sound much, but over a 100m race, which takes about 10 seconds, this is equal to an error of 2 metres.

The automatic stopwatch was introduced at the 1932 Los Angeles Games and improved accuracy to 1/10th or 0.1 of a second (one decimal place). A wire was placed across the finish line and when knocked by the winning runner, it triggered the stopwatch to stop timing. Also introduced in these Olympics was the use of newsreel film of each race with an in- built chronograph (time-measurer) to help decide the winner if two athletes seemed to cross the line and thus trigger the wire at the same time.

DID YOU KNOW?

In the 1932 Olympics 100m sprint between Americans Eddie Tolan and Ralph Metcalfe, both clocked in at 10.3 seconds. Luckily the judges used newsreel film and a chronograph image to determine the winner, but the trouble was, everyone had to wait until the film was developed to find out that Tolan had won the gold medal!


Electronic Equipment

In electronic timing devices, an electrical current causes a quartz crystal to vibrate at an amazingly constant rate. This in turn controls a display of numbers. Electronic timing devices are extremely accurate and reliable. They were first used in the 1972 Olympics in Montreal and improved accuracy to 1/100th or 0.01 of a second (ie. two decimal places). Today they are actually capable of measuring to within 1/1000th of a second, 10 times the required accuracy under the rules!

Links between electronic timing and recording equipment

When the electronic starting gun fires, an electrical current passes through a copper wire cable to a timing console, triggering it immediately to start timing the race.

A photo-finish camera (first introduced in the 1948 Games but in its modern form only in the last decade) scans the finish line up to 2000 times per second and sends an electrical message to the timing console to signify when each runner's torso crosses the line.

The total running time for each athlete is then relayed to the judges and an electronic scoreboard.

 
Fair Go, Everyone!

The electronic starting gun and starting blocks act in two ways to make sure the race start is a fair one for all athletes :


Electronic starting blocks Swatch
  1. If you were to fire an old-fashioned starting pistol, the sound it makes would travel through the air and the athletes closest to the pistol would hear the sound slightly before the others. Why wouldn't this be fair?The modern electronic starting gun allows all the athletes to hear the sound at exactly the same time. The gun is connected by copper wires to speakers at each of the starting blocks. This is especially important in races like the 400 metres sprint, where the athlete in the outside lane starts right around the curve from where the starting gun is fired!
  2. To prevent any advantage to an athlete who accidently starts to move before the gun is fired, the aluminium starting blocks also contain electronics that activate when the runner suddenly lurches forward, putting pressure on the pad. The difference between the moment the starting signal is given and the first movement is called the 'reaction time measurement'. Experts have conducted tests on human reactions times and worked out that even the quickest athlete couldn't possibly start moving off their block in less than 1/10th of a second from the moment they hear the gun. (Their nerves and muscles just aren't that fast!). So if the timer shows a reaction time measurement of, say, 0.09 seconds, then the athlete must have started to move before the gun was fired. The measurement device sends an audible signal to the starter's headphones, who then declares a 'false start'.

Stadium Australia's Electronic Equipment

For the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Stadium Australia had:

Panasonic Screen, Stadium Australia (Joanna Buckley)

DID YOU KNOW?

In the 1900 Games in Paris, Francis Jarvis won the 100 m sprint and was recorded as "the winner by one foot from Walter Tewksbury, who beat Australian Stan Rowley by inches." (Not very accurate, were they!)

In the first modern Games, in Athens in 1896, American Thomas Burke won the men's 100 m sprint using a "crouch" start, which fascinated the spectators. Untilthen, runners had started from a near-standing position. Later, starting blocks were introduced to replace holes dug in the ground. Originally made of wood, starting blocks are now made of metal with rubber-covered pressure pads.

Fifty years ago, most Australians followed sports by reading the newspaper or listening to a radio. This meant results were often hours if not days old! Today we get instant coverage of major sporting events taking place around the world.

TV cameras are now so sophisticated and small, they can be positioned to give close-ups of the action - for example, placed in the upright poles of the high-jump or a small golf-cart type vehicle which rolls along the track ahead of the sprinters.

Some athletes have amazing reaction times. Cathy Freeman was recorded with a reaction time of just 0.223 seconds (that's less than a quarter of a second!) A possibility in the future is 'transponder technology', where individual athletes will have an electronic tag on them which will monitor and store data about their performance throughout an event such as a cross-country run.