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?
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 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.
