How Olympic Timing Works | Hacker News Reader

How Olympic Timing Works

entertainment.howstuffworks.com

75 pointshistories50 comments

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-...

> 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...

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)

Yep! And a slight oddity is that at least the group I’ve worked with at Swiss timing is primarily Germans. I worked with them for XC Skiing events but I think they are also the ones who do track. There are multiple teams within Swiss timing that focus on different sports

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!

Do they verify the track lengths for sprints?

> rounded to the hundreds of a second

As below, this is why the metric system is superior. Centiseconds vs hectoseconds makes it much easier to see the mistake.

I've never seen the "hecto-" prefix before, but I immediately have an undying hatred for it. "Hecto-" means "a sixth of", "hecato-" means "a hundredth of". Sucks that people chose the wrong spelling because they didn't realize it changes the meaning so much.

The hecto- prefix isn't commonly used for durations, but it's often used for barometric pressures as in hPa (Hectopascal), or areas such as ha (Hectare), at least in Europe. And it is an official SI prefix.

This is all true, but I still hate it for being wrong :/

It is sometimes used in grocery stores in Norway when you need to ask for a quantity of something that is not pre-packed.

"I'd like 2 hecto ham" means 2 hectograms (200g, or 0.2kg)

It may sound strange if you are not used to it. I also have a feeling that the younger generations prefer just measuring in grams when it is less than a kg. Let's blame the school system ;-)

We also sometimes measure area as "dekar" (1000 sq m) and "hektar" (10000 sq m)

It's surprisingly (well) similar in italian, where "etto" is 100 g and "ettaro" is 10000 m².

The dictionary says that "hecto" is hundreth "from French hecto-, from Ancient Greek ἑκατόν (hekatón, “hundred”)." It was sometimes spelled "hecato" in 19th century.

In English, "hexa" is the prefix for sixth from the Greek "hex".

Certainly; I'm merely suggesting English is wrong.

In thousands of a second, you could gain an advantage by growing long fingernails to touch the wall fractionally earlier.

At the possible cost of increased water resistance, and/versus possible increase in power of stroke.

Sounds like fertile ground for a Ph.D thesis that sparks a nail craze.

Wouldn’t you want longer fingernails anyway for a bigger paddle effect?

Can't they build a false wall to force an exact length?

>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

Forgive us Americans and being bad at metric. I personally wouldn’t have noticed the mistake, but I only have two brain cells.

For other dummies, it should be milliseconds (1000x difference)

400ms seems way too long for a blink. 300us is obviously wrong though.

According to Wikipedia:

> The duration of a blink is on average 100–150 milliseconds according to UCL researcher and between 100 and 400 ms according to the Harvard Database of Useful Biological Numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinking

GP quoted "microseconds" i.e. 1000x smaller.

Maybe it was intended to mean the time between neurological impulse to blink and the physical eyelid moving? Still, yeah, original text seems misleading.

The 100-200 milliseconds duration of a blink was often cited in web development circles in the late 90s / early '00s, that I sometimes forget it isn't a widely known fact.

They have a link to a source for that claim... and the source says 300 to 400 milliseconds. So whoever wrote and edited the OP article just messed this up.

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...

This is why you’ll see the finish times in track move a little bit from the immediate unofficial time to the final time. A computer selects which frame was the finish and then someone on the timing crew will move the “line” a bit to exactly capture the correct time. This allows for instantaneous times and then correct final times

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.

Well what stops others from leaning forward? Sense like not an advantage because if it helped everyone would opt to do it.

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.

That kinda conflicts with the psychology of motivation for elite-level training, where they know/feel there'll be a reward for putting in that extra training effort to be a tiny sliver better on the day.

I have a similar opinion, where if the difference comes down to milliseconds and race comes down to who has a longer fingernail or who has a thicker torso, I am not sure those were the attributes that the athletes were meant to compete on.

Technological advancements have led to precise timing. Compared to ten or twenty years ago, technology nowadays is truly much more advanced.

On my phone (Firefox on Android) this page hijacks the back button and gesture. Not nice.

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

> I prefer flowers and gardening, reading and debating

We can have both.

but they are not compatible with the mindset of competition

Gardening, reading, debating is compatible with collaboration

These people want to win. It's not just society wanting to define winners.

They "want to win" because they live in a society where they've been "taught" to want this... but this is not natural

Nobody is forcing you to watch or care about the Olympics. You chose to read the article and comment on it.

Ads. Ads are forcing me to care about the Olympics. Peer pressure forces me to watch the Olympics to know what people are talking about.

> Ads are forcing me to care about the Olympics.

Are they? At worst they force you to notice that the olympics are going on.

> Peer pressure forces me to watch the Olympics to know what people are talking about.

Talk about something else with these people if the olympics don't interest you...

I don't control other people's topics of conversation.

You're correct, they force me to notice over and over again.

> I don't control other people's topics of conversation.

Talk with other people then...

> You're correct, they force me to notice over and over again.

Boo-hoo.

> Boo-hoo Just because it didn't bother you doesn't mean it doesn't bother me.

> Talk with other people then...

So you have more options than I do it seems, doesn't justify being rude.

And what? I might like sports, but not the way it's presented. I like that people share their joy of performance, I don't like the celebration of competition, but rather of collaboration and shared enjoyment, which should be what is truly celebrated

When you’re at the extreme ends of performance as Olympic athletes are, progress happens in tiny increments. .01s here and there add up over time until the limits of humanity are reached.

We aren't building a society this way, it has been this way since near the beginning of the Olympic games. We just have events now that occur where the athletes are so closely matched that sometimes we get crazy close times.

There are other sports in the Olympics where athletes can share in a medal should both Athletes agree.

Regardless of whether you place gold, silver or bronze they are still the "best athletes" in the world, heck to even make it to the final is an incredible achievement in of itself.

You can still view all of these athletes as incredible, regardless of who got the gold.

Yes, and the "fourth" athlete, which is not in the podium, is not called the "best athletes", is not interviewed, doesn't have commercial deals... just because he's, what, 5ms behind the others? on a 100m race? this makes no sense and is just human stupidity

People are diverse. I am not sure how would you react to someone pitying you for liking flowers, gardening, reading and debating. ("It feels a bit sad").

The golden rule applies.

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