For reference, Valtteri Bottas supposedly recorded a 40ms!!! reaction time at the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix.
https://www.formula1.com/en/video/valtteri-bottas-flying-fin...
https://www.formula1.com/en/video/valtteri-bottas-flying-fin...
"World Athletics rules that if an athlete moves within 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) of the pistol being fired to start the race, then that constitutes a false start."
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5678148/2024/08/03/olympics...
The argument for it being what it is is the fact that our auditorial processing (when using a starter pistol) or visual processing (looking at start-lights) takes time, as well as transferring that message to the relevant muscles. 100 milliseconds is a pretty good average actually
I don't have extensive resources/references at hand, but I've read about this a few times over the years.
Yeah well, I did a psych bsc and I'm telling you that it's impossible.
It's certainly possible for people to do and notice things way faster than that, like a musician noticing a drummer being a few ms off beat, or speedrunners hitting frame perfect inputs, but in those cases the expectation and internal timekeeping is doing most of the heavy lifting.
Someone new to the “gunshot, run” dynamic could take longer, a soldier trained via repetition to react to a gunshot could be shorter, and a veteran with PTSD could be shorter still.
100ms is both too long and too short (or so I’ve heard, I’m not an expert).
I'm willing to bet Bottas fouled that, too late (or late enough).