Timing accuracy

[EddieH]

It is interesting that had the digital timer used at WOC registered only seconds instead of tenths, the Portuguese Tiago Romao would not have qualified for the final in 15th= place as the Lithuanian he was level with would have been recorded at 1 second faster - thus Tiago would have been 16th.

This is because times are only recorded to the second, and therefore the Lithuanians 57.8 was rounded up to 58 (Tiago had 58.0). A i second timing system would not have clocked up the 58th second and would therefore have displayed 57.

Similarly 2 runners finishing in 58.4 and 58.6 would under the WOC timing be given 58 and 59 seconds and therefore not tied whereas with a 1 second clock they would tie.

This means that there is a 1 in 10 chance of being declared tied with someone you beat by 0.9 second, as there is the same chance of beating someone that was only 0.1 second behind you all depending on which 10ths happen to be involved.

Perhaps when tenth second timing is available it would make sense to use it to place runners, and at other times use seconds. this way visible anomolies would be prevented.

[andy]

Pretty sure the rules are that sprint events are to the 10th of a second and anything else is 1 sec

I don't really understand what you're talking about though - are you talking about a backup system? or SI? what software was used if so?

[Dave]

that does seem daft if they are timing more acurately than the results they display...obviously someone involved in the organising wasn't thinking very logically

[NeilC]

Pretty sure the rules are that sprint events are to the 10th of a second and anything else is 1 sec

Only the final has to be timed to 10ths of a second.

[graeme]

The organisers are following the IOF rules, as they should.

Just because it shows tenths on the clock doesn't mean it's accurate. Andy can give us the SI party line on their timers, but I'd be surprised if they'd stake their reputation on the clocks having less than 0.1 sec drift over 3-4 hours. From my experience, the variation in read/write time is longer than that.

[Duncan]

What has read/write time got to do with it? I think we are only talking about races using light gates for timing here, not SI. I agree clock drift could be an issue though.

[andy]

What has read/write time got to do with it? I think we are only talking about races using light gates for timing here, not SI. I agree clock drift could be an issue though.

Clock drift would be still be an issue as they run through SI so I assume it's similar kit (haven't seen/used light gates yet!) but I'm afraid I don't know the numbers off the top of my head

[EddieH]

The race timing is clearly NOT SI. They had starting gates as in downhill skiing, and were timed across the line by whatever method given in tenths.

My point is that if you are recording to the second it might be better not to record tenths at all, as inevitably the scenario I gave above will occur at some time.

[andy]

The race timing is clearly NOT SI. They had starting gates as in downhill skiing, and were timed across the line by whatever method given in tenths.

um, you get SI lightgates (possibly barriers too), I don't know exactly how they work though

http://www.sportident.com/index.php?sit ... r=&nav=205

I've seen videos of people crossing the line and then punching an SI box, I assume this then associates their SI card with the time they crossed the line.

The technology (SI hardware) is definitely there to support this, so I assume that it was SI they were using.

[King Penguin]

Canoeing wild water racing and slalom have been using beam timing for major events for years.
rules are :
hand-held start and finish timing (akin to SI punch) - time to 1 sec
hand-held start and beam finish - time to 0.1 sec
beam start and finish timing - time to 0.01 sec

[Snail]

... had the digital timer used at WOC registered only seconds instead of tenths, the Portuguese Tiago Romao would not have qualified for the final in 15th= place as the Lithuanian he was level with would have been recorded at 1 second faster - thus Tiago would have been 16th.

This is because times are only recorded to the second, and therefore the Lithuanians 57.8 was rounded up to 58 (Tiago had 58.0). A i second timing system would not have clocked up the 58th second and would therefore have displayed 57.

Not sure if EddieH was suggesting that the exact times were originally 15:57.8 and 15:58.0 (the results website now shows both as 15:58). If so then Tiago Romao was indeeed lucky to be given 15= place and get to the final - as IOF rules say that times are to be rounded down to whole seconds (other than in the sprint final), which would imply that Jonas Gvildys's time should have been 15:57. Perhaps surprising that the organisers appear not to have interpreted the rules correctly.

[EddieH]

Interesting that - no - throughout WOC seconds were rounded to the nearest second. Tiago did indeed record 57.8.

[andy]

Perhaps surprising that the organisers appear not to have interpreted the rules correctly.

They could have done... but the software they were using for timing might not have...