from Hacker News

How Olympic Timing Works

by histories on 8/7/24, 1:18 PM with 50 comments

by mintone on 8/11/24, 11:11 AM
The article states that "They scan an image through a thin slit up to 2,000 times a second", whereas it has been widely reported that it is actually 40,000 times a second[1]
The article probably wasn't wrong, for when it was first written. This is a curious internet thing - this article is a decade old and has been updated incrementally to keep it somewhat relevant, however because it's about tech that keeps advancing it ends up being a misleading source.
If you look at all of the sources, they're from January 2014 but because the article is undated it leads you to think it's is correct. It's an interesting problem. An old textbook is clearly an old textbook, but a website can just have modern CSS applied, dates removed and there is no apparent guide to the freshness of the article. Internet problems.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2024/08/05/noah-lyles-wins-gold-track-...
by tedunangst on 8/11/24, 3:37 AM
> They decided that any start less than 0.04 seconds after a teammate tags the wall is a false start
This appears to be regurgitating a source that misread the primary material. The differential is actually -0.04s. I.e., before they touch the wall.
https://swimming.ca/content/uploads/2015/05/chief-judge-elec...
https://resources.fina.org/fina/document/2022/02/08/77c3058d...
by Lukas_Skywalker on 8/11/24, 2:32 PM
Interestingly, it isn't really Omega, Longines, Tissot, Blancpain, Certina and the like that do the timing, but a small-ish company named "Swiss Timing", which is part of Swatch Group, as are the above mentioned companies [0]. It doesn't sell watches though, so marketing that name doesn't make much sense.
The brands that are displayed are part of the same group, and do indeed sell watches, and therefore are printed on the equipment.
They were the result of a merger when the Swiss watchmakers got afraid of growing sales of Japanese watches, especially Seiko [1].
[0]: https://www.swatchgroup.com/en/companies-brands/electronic-s...
[1]: https://codefabrik-static-various.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.... (PDF, 304kB)
by fouronnes3 on 8/11/24, 5:45 AM
Fun fact: swimming records times are rounded to the hundreds of a second, because recording more precise times would require too high of a tolerance on the length of the pool at construction. I wonder if it's the same for some other sports!
by sammy2255 on 8/11/24, 6:11 AM
>and note that it takes 300 to 400 microseconds for an eye to blink
Anyone with at least half a brain knows this is ridiculously fast. Thats obviously incorrect
by ec109685 on 8/11/24, 8:23 AM
What kind of crazy camera can distinguish a torso crossing the line?
> When the leading edge of each runner's torso crosses the line, the camera sends an electric signal to the timing console to record the time.
I believe it’s up to the judge to place the “crossing” line at the appropriate spot.
https://worldathletics.org/download/download?filename=4423f7...
by sam_goody on 8/11/24, 3:37 PM
What this article doesn't explain are the ambiguous ways of crossing the line - if a cyclist leans forward and their nose crosses before the front of their tire, from where is it measured? How about their hat? If a runner's belly is larger than their torso (OK, unlikely) does that count?
I have seen some articles discussing this during the last olympics, and remember thinking how much more impressive it made the job of measuring completion.
by ggambetta on 8/11/24, 10:29 AM
Wondering if it would make more sense to award shared gold/silver/bronze to athletes whose times fall within a certain distance of each other. The difference between 10.00 and 10.01 is much smaller than the difference between "gold" and "silver".
Put it another way, both (10.00, 10.01) and (10.00, 20.00) map to (gold, silver), despite being qualitatively very different.
by Moon_Y on 8/11/24, 2:44 PM
Technological advancements have led to precise timing. Compared to ten or twenty years ago, technology nowadays is truly much more advanced.
by andyjohnson0 on 8/11/24, 11:02 AM
On my phone (Firefox on Android) this page hijacks the back button and gesture. Not nice.
by oulipo on 8/11/24, 11:08 AM
It feels a bit sad to see that the "best athletes" are "ranked" as gold, silver, bronze, when often their performance is globally equivalent (when you run 100m at full-speed and you come at 0.01s of each other, you basically run the exact same speed)
It's a kind of weird society of competition we're building... I prefer flowers and gardening, reading and debating