The winner of the 200 men's *** did an obvious full dolphin kick at the finish of the race and the tv commentators said nothing!!
If such a kick is seen and not called here - how was Lilly dq'ed for non simultaneous hand touch after video review???
I had an interesting conversation about touchpads with Matt Murphy of Omega in Bloomington. The current Omega timing software can track and sort out multiple touches during a race. This occurs frequently during distance freestyle events when the lap counters inadvertently hit the pads with the count boards. They basically set up a timing "window" in the software when the actual swimmers' touches normally would occur and ignore anything else. I suppose in theory they could do the same thing looking for two hand touches within a more narrow window.
As an official I'm a bit biased, but I still think the best solution is well-trained, experienced officials on deck.
Yeah, but to have the timing system automatically adjudicate touches, it would need to be much more granular than what they do right now. For example, right now most timing systems set up for flyover starts ignore any touch pad touches within a margin of the start of the heat, I think the standard is something like 15 seconds from my discussions with timing officials over the years here in the Potomac Valley, though that might be different in other places.
The policy update would need to determine how a touch is adjudicated if, say, there are 8 points of contact at the finish and there's .11 between the first and last point of contact. To my knowledge current timing systems don't have the level of detail necessary to adjudicate that specificity.
Since the tech exists, I'm a big proponent of incorporating into timing systems, but it would take a lot of policy work to work out the specific details for implementation.
I had an interesting conversation about touchpads with Matt Murphy of Omega in Bloomington. The current Omega timing software can track and sort out multiple touches during a race. This occurs frequently during distance freestyle events when the lap counters inadvertently hit the pads with the count boards. They basically set up a timing "window" in the software when the actual swimmers' touches normally would occur and ignore anything else. I suppose in theory they could do the same thing looking for two hand touches within a more narrow window.
As an official I'm a bit biased, but I still think the best solution is well-trained, experienced officials on deck.
Yeah, but to have the timing system automatically adjudicate touches, it would need to be much more granular than what they do right now. For example, right now most timing systems set up for flyover starts ignore any touch pad touches within a margin of the start of the heat, I think the standard is something like 15 seconds from my discussions with timing officials over the years here in the Potomac Valley, though that might be different in other places.
The policy update would need to determine how a touch is adjudicated if, say, there are 8 points of contact at the finish and there's .11 between the first and last point of contact. To my knowledge current timing systems don't have the level of detail necessary to adjudicate that specificity.
Since the tech exists, I'm a big proponent of incorporating into timing systems, but it would take a lot of policy work to work out the specific details for implementation.
