Omega says Cavic touched first

Then again why stop at the second digit beyond the decimal - why not go 3 or 4 digits. Ties are so messy. Because these digits are insignificant. Pool tolerances aren't that tight so you might be swimming up to an inch less per length than the guy next to you.

Aren't official pools certified by a surveyor to make sure there no such discrepancies? The stress is on "official" and "certified". Yes, but there's still a tolerance. Pools are allowed a positive tolerance (i.e., too long) of 3 cm. The negative tolerance is zero (i.e., every lane must measure at least 25 meters or 50 meters, but not to exceed 25.03 or 50.03 meters). I went over this calculation before, but if we assume a 20 second 50 meter swim, that means the swimmer is traveling an average of 2.5 m/s. In .01 seconds they would move forward by 2.5 cm which--curiously enough--is very close to the tolerance value on the pool length.

1625Pic of the finish If you click on the photo, you can see how Cavic's fingers haven't touch the T, but Phelps has clearly hit the wall. Case closed. Looks like Cavic has at least 3 fingers on the wall. You pic doesn't prove anything.

Maybe new Olympic tie breaking rule is in order? Any swims within .01 require an immediate re-do of the race. No warm down. Just get up on the blocks and do a swim off. First one to the finish regardless of time is the winner. That would settle everything. Yeah I'll get Matt Biondi and Anthony Nesty on the line! Problem is where does it end? Why stop at .01? Those that assert (somehow with confidence) that Cavic touched first are in effect claiming a .02 discrepancy between when they believe Cavic finished and what the touch pads registered. Timing systems are not infallible. The problems with Seiko in Fukuoka in 2001 demonstrated this. However then the problems were obvious and indisputable. In this case all parties seem to agree that the pads functioned as intended. But people are speculating about a scenario where the pads don't pick up touches and insufficient force being applied. Problem is we haven't been shown any evidence that this occurred in the first place. Not that it could not have transpired that way but we haven't seen any proof that it did. I understand the speculation given how far Cavic had been ahead, how the race appeared live in real time from over the pool, and the gravity of the 8th gold medal. Those unique circumstances make it different than any other previous finish that came down to one hundredth of a second. The extra scrutiny was inevitable. But whatever the hypotheticals and limitations of the timing system I will trust it more than all the subjective theories and suppositions. It doesn't have bias. I believe that before one asserts that the official result was merely a product of the system's limitations they should support this view with evidence to confirm it.

I've attached a screen capture from the video. I'm assuming this is the one Greg is talking about. It certainly looks like Cavic is very close, but certainly isn't conclusive that he is touching. In fact it just illustrates how deceptive perspective can be. Phelps' arms are still recovering, yet it looks like Cavic is very close to touching. We know the finish was very close so there's no way Cavic has actually touched the wall at this point or else the difference would have been significantly more than .01. Here's an underwater view of the race and the finish visually looks simultaneous YouTube - men's 100 butterfly final Beijing 08 - cavic vs phelps - UNDERWATER VIEW

What's wrong with declaring a TIE? The finish order will continue to be defined by the limits of the technology/equipment. Let them split the time, hell, give each one-half of the medal, and await the rematch. Before touchpads, the place judge called the order of finish which overruled the hand held analog stopwatches. I know an NCAA All-American who won a 50 free and admitted he never touch the wall, and I survived a protested 1st with a time :0.1 secs slower than 2nd. Maybe the first swimmer to push the button that sets off the Rube Goldberg device that releases 1000's of endorsement dollahs is the winner? You learn more from your losses than your wins.

It is not who touched first it is who has the Gold Medal. Who has the fastest time or who has the gold medal. It happenned to me twice. Judged first I had a slower time. Judged second I had the faster time. This was when each lane had timers, no touch pads.

Of course track finishes are harder to judge because any part of your body could cross the line first. I could be wrong but I believe that in track it's the chest/torso not any part of the body; the fingers, hands and arms do not count.

For some twisted reason the mental image of track using touchpads on a wall to judge finishes made me chuckle. Could you imagine the finish of the 100 meter dash into a brick wall :) Actually that gives me an idea. Very thin rectangles of a material that a) conducts electricity and b) is heavy enough not to flap in a wind and c) upon being touched acts as the touch pad in swimming. One of each such "pads" to be placed as if they were a door at the finish line and the runners could just run through them (like you see in some American Football games when the team (or the cheering-girls) come through whatever screen they use. Do you think that if they ever had such a system, some runners might "hesitate" to go full bore, fearing that a prankster might have placed a solid and heavy object behind?

Using track is an apples/oranges argument. Track finish rules are any part of the head or torso crossing OVER the finish line thru the air in any manner. That would not work for swimming. Swimming has specific finish rules for each stroke and because of this requires a defined, finite barrier. Ain't nobody swimming thru the wall. Until some sort of laser timing system is created, touchpads are the best system we have. Or they could make all the pools 55 meters long and the finish laser would be at 10 meters before the end (55+45=100). For a 50m dash, reposition the laser 5 meters from the end and let swimmers' hands be the part of the body that gets lasered.