100m butterfly - Cavic beats Phelps?

As for the question of how much difference there has to be for it not to be considered a tie, the answer is that two finishes may be considered at tie with as much as 0.09999 seconds difference and may be considered not a tie if they differ by as little as 0.00001 seconds. All that matters is on which side of a 0.01 clock tick the two swimmers are. Consider 3 swimmers that touch at 1:00.995000001, 1:01.0049999999, and 1:01.005000001. The first two, separated by almost a full 0.01 would both be given a time of 1:01.00 and would have a tie. The third swimmer who trails the second swimmer by two billionths of a second would be given a time of 1:01.01 and would not tie the second swimmer. Back in the 1960s, there was a timing device that would mark a spark on a rotating drum that would have shown relative differences finer than 0.01. I believe it was then that the swimming world realized the futility of timing to ever smaller fractions of a second. So the 0.01 second granularity was chosen. But, this results in the kind of unfairness I describe above. Remember that 0.01 seconds is about 3/4 of an inch at a pace of 50sec/100m. ======== If you think touch pads never lie, and you have access to the first heat of the men's 4x100 Medley Relay (1:02 into the Friday morning broadcast), review the finish of Australia and Japan. The clock claims that Australia won by 0.05, but the underwater video surely looks like Japan touched first, probably by about 0.02 seconds, and did not touch in a frame later than the Australians. If you look at the high def broadcast video, watch for the shadows of the fingers to meet the fingers which indicates whether there is a touch yet. (The SD video doesn't show the shadows as well). I'd love to see the high speed video from above to confirm whether the clock was right or wrong.

As for the question of how much difference there has to be for it not to be considered a tie, the answer is that two finishes may be considered at tie with as much as 0.09999 seconds difference and may be considered not a tie if they differ by as little as 0.00001 seconds. All that matters is on which side of a 0.01 clock tick the two swimmers are. Consider 3 swimmers that touch at 1:00.995000001, 1:01.0049999999, and 1:01.005000001. The first two, separated by almost a full 0.01 would both be given a time of 1:01.00 and would have a tie. The third swimmer who trails the second swimmer by two billionths of a second would be given a time of 1:01.01 and would not tie the second swimmer. Back in the 1960s, there was a timing device that would mark a spark on a rotating drum that would have shown relative differences finer than 0.01. I believe it was then that the swimming world realized the futility of timing to ever smaller fractions of a second. So the 0.01 second granularity was chosen. But, this results in the kind of unfairness I describe above. Remember that 0.01 seconds is about 3/4 of an inch at a pace of 50sec/100m. ======== If you think touch pads never lie, and you have access to the first heat of the men's 4x100 Medley Relay (1:02 into the Friday morning broadcast), review the finish of Australia and Japan. The clock claims that Australia won by 0.05, but the underwater video surely looks like Japan touched first, probably by about 0.02 seconds, and did not touch in a frame later than the Australians. If you look at the high def broadcast video, watch for the shadows of the fingers to meet the fingers which indicates whether there is a touch yet. (The SD video doesn't show the shadows as well). I'd love to see the high speed video from above to confirm whether the clock was right or wrong.