TOKYO — Medals have been awarded in about half of the 35 Olympic swimming events at the 2020 Summer Games. Unlike recent Olympics, there have not been any ties that required organizers to award multiple medals.
But there have been ties, a lot of them. In all of the heats, semifinals and finals need to decided the 17 swimming events completed in Tokyo so far, all but four included ties.
Interestingly, America's Gunnar Bentz swam the 200-meter butterfly in 1:55.46 in both the third heat and the final, where he finished seventh. Australia's Elijah Winnington similarly tied himself in the fifth heat and the final of the 400-meter freestyle.
How Olympic swimming events are timed
Electronic touch pads have been in use at the Olympics since the 1968 games in Mexico City. Invented in 1957 by University of Michigan physics professor Bill Parkinson in an effort to reduce the more than 30 officials crowding the pool deck and producing widely varying measurements.
The need was underscored at the 1960 Summer Games in Rome when a world record in the men's 100-meter freestyle – and silver medal – were awarded to American Lance Larson. Australia's John Devitt was awarded gold by the head judge in the very close race, ignoring the three (manual) stopwatches in each lane and the (unofficial) electronic timer, which had Larson finishing ahead of Devitt by 0.1 second.
The system in place in Tokyo, provided by Omega Sports Timing, the official Olympic timekeeper since the 1932 Summer Games in Los Angles, is made up of touch pads on each end of the pool, sensors in the start blocks that measure reaction time and cameras between each lane above and below the water, which provide officials views used to spot rule violations and as backup should timers malfunction.
The clock is launched when the starter presses a button, producing a tone that travels at the speed of light to speakers in each starting block. This is an improvement over a starter pistol, which takes 0.07 second to reach the far lane.
The clock is stopped by the swimmers themselves. A force of between 1.5 and 2.5 pounds against the touchpad is required to prevent false stops from waves. Also, watch for lights on the side of the starting blocks indicating first-, second- and third-pace finishers.
All this information flows into the adjacent timekeeping room, where high speed cameras provide unofficial live information to scoreboards and to broadcasters like NBC to enable overlaid graphics showing the speed of individual swimmers, lines indicating Olympic and world record pace and results instantly.
Why so many ties?
The answer lies the rules of the Fédération Internationale De Natation, or FINA, the governing body for swimming, which dictate times be measured to 0.01 second. Limitations in these timing systems and the pool itself make bringing that resolution down to 0.001 difficult at best and likely impossible.
According to Omega Chief Executive Alain Zobrist, the timing systems are capable of resolution down to one-millionth of a second. But these are large complicated systems involving many distinct sensors.
FINA rules recognize these challenges, allowing up to a 0.03 second difference in relays between the time when the previous swimmer hits the touch pad on the wall and when sensor in the starting block indicates the next swimmer has left.
Also, unlike track events, which can be measured with a single sensor at the finish line, swimming has eight finish lines, each with its own set of sensors.
Using the current world record of 20.91 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle as a guide, to achieve 0.01 second accuracy, those 16 touch pads would have to be installed and maintained throughout a week of 1,200 races to a tolerance of less than 3 centimeters.
Timothy Burke pointed to the 3-centimeter tolerances pools are built to in a 2016 article in the sports blog DeadSpin. Since then, FINA's regulations have reduced that to a single centimeter. That means Lane 1 can legally be 1 centimeter longer than Lane 8, a 0.0004-second difference at that world record pace. Concrete expands and contracts as both air and water temperatures change over the week and even hour to hour as well.
There are a similar number of track events at the Olympics, which are also timed to 0.01 second, also by Omega. Nearly all close calls on the track can be resolved by the photo finish judge. The World Athletics Association, which governs track and field events, requires high-speed video of the finish with millisecond or better resolution.
Cameras mounted between lanes at the swimming venue, used primarily to ensure swimmers aren't leaving the blocks in relays before their teammate has touched the wall, provide no better than 0.01 second resolution the rest of the system is designed around.
Solution to ties?
Little attention has been paid to the 34 ties within the swimming events mostly because closest we've come to a crowded medal stand has been the men's 400-meter individual medley and freestyle events, where the third- and fourth-place finishers had identical times.
But more importantly, the goal of each event is for the best eight athletes to compete in the finals. If ties in the heats or semifinals produce a field bigger than the number of available lanes, swim-offs are built into the schedule. This has already happened in the men's 200-meter freestyle and women's 100-meter freestyle.
Should ties persist into the finals of any of the remaining events, Tokyo could join the list of seven Summer Olympic Games since Los Angeles in 1984 that have given out a few more swimming medals than planned – and the sport's governing body is OK with that.
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