On August 27, 1960, on the Olympics in Rome, probably the most controversial gold medals was awarded. On the 100-meter freestyle males’s swimming occasion, Australian swimmer John Devitt and American Lance Larson each recorded the identical end time of 55.2 seconds. Solely Devitt walked away with the gold medal.
The best way swimming was timed was through the use of three timers per lane, all with stopwatches, from which a median was taken. Within the uncommon incidence there was a tie, a head decide, on this case Hans Runströmer from Sweden, was available to adjudicate. Regardless of Larson being technically one-tenth of a second faster, Runströmer decreed the occasions have been the identical and declared for Devitt.
It was this controversy that, by 1968, had led to Omega growing contact boards for the ends of swimming lanes so the athletes might cease timing themselves, eradicating any threat of human error.
Alain Zobrist, head of Omega’s Swiss Timing—the 400-employee department of Omega that offers with something that occasions, measures, or tracks close to sufficient all sports activities—is stuffed with tales like this.
How, for instance, in 2024, the digital beginning pistol is now linked to a speaker behind every athlete as a result of, in staggered-lane races such because the 400 meter, these athletes within the furthest lane beforehand heard the beginning gun a fraction later than these closest to the gun, giving them an obstacle.
Or how, when picture finishes have been first used within the Nineteen Forties, it might take almost two hours to decide since you needed to develop the footage first. Now Omega’s new Scan-o-Imaginative and prescient can seize as much as 40,000 digital pictures per second, permitting judges to make a name in minutes.
To separate hairs—or certainly seconds—Swiss Timing hasn’t actually been within the enterprise of merely timing a race for a really very long time. Regardless of the Omega emblem being on each timing machine at each Olympics since 1932 (apart from when Seiko received a glance in in 1964 and 1992), what Swiss Timing does is far more than simply begin and end occasions. “We tell the story of the race, not just the result,” Zobrist says. As for Paris 2024, that storytelling has received fairly much more plot strains than earlier than.
“2018 was pivotal for us,” says Zobrist. “That was when we started to introduce motion sensors on athletes’ clothing, which allowed us to understand the full performance—what happens between start and finish.”
