I had always thought that touch pads were the most reliable timing equipment. I had heard of isolated incidents of probable errors,but expected they were very rare. At the SPMS SCY meet last weekend the time for my 50 BR didn't register. I didn't notice since I thought the 5th place time was the lane 5 time and so I thought I knew my time (lane 5 time on this scoreboard was shown at the top, not following lane 4,hence my confusion.) When the results were posted on SwimPhone I was listed as NS.After some panic I went to the officials,they determined that I had swum and used the hand times as my official time. This was the event where the gasket in my goggle slipped,so I thought I may have missed the pad on the touch,but I just viewed the video from the meet and I clearly touch with my hands underwater in the middle of the pad. Can any expert out there speculate as to what went wrong and how reliable are touch pads really?
We also had this problem at the Illinois state meet.
We were told swim phone is not the official list.
We contacted the meet director, and he is looking into it.
You may also want to contact him with race/heat/lane to get further results.
I got my results and it is an official swim,they just used the hand timers' results as there was no touch pad results. The timers clearly didn't contact the actual pad,could they have touched the cable to the pad,I can't say.
I would speculate it was a problem with the connection between the pad and the timing system rather than with the actual pad. I know I've been at plenty of meets where touch pads need to be swapped out, so they certainly aren't foolproof.
Touch pads fail often. (ok, maybe it's the connections not the actual pad, as Kirk points out.) Angel was almost denied the opportunity to defend his 200 fr title in Rio on account of a pad failure.
swimswam.com/.../
The "party line" is that he touched the pad too low, which sounds like nonsense to me, and has been called as much by people who saw the race.
Electronic timing can fail for a number of reasons. I’ve found that the main 3 reasons are pad malfunction, poor pad to harness to console connection, bad touch. However the timing console operator should always be on the lookout for this and know when to take a secondary or tertiary time.
Pad malfunctions are usually unique to the manufacturer. Omega pads can have a faulty or stuck tape switch or issues with slats. Colorado pads can be under or over inflated. Some pads can have dead spots.
Touch pads connect to deck boxes or a deck harness which connect to the timing console. Water, chlorine, copper and electricity don’t play well together. It takes a lot of care and maintenance to keep these components in good working condition.
Bad touches can be too soft or finishing on an inactive spot on the pad.
