On millisecond stupidity

I have written time and again on the absurdity of using milliseconds in order to break a tie. In one of the first articles of mine I had written:

The rules stipulate that “the athletes shall be placed in the order in which any part of their bodies (i.e. torso, as distinguished from the head, neck, arms, legs, hands or feet) reaches the vertical plane of the nearer edge of the finish line”. The difficulty lies in defining in a precise way and on a deformed photo what is precisely a “torso”. For an athlete dipping for the finish shoulders should definitely count but sometimes the judges cannot distinguish them from a part of the neck. For an athlete running at 10 m/s a millisecond corresponds to just 1 cm. Can we be sure of such a precision when a human eye is called upon to disentangle a difficult situation? My answer is a resounding “no”.

And, in case you are wondering,  in an other article of mine I propose a totally automatised method, without human intervention which would lead to far more reliable results.

But here I am not going to write about the ab(use) of milliseconds but about an incident during the 2023 World Championships and in particular the women's 100 m semi-final. There were three semi-final heats with the first two finishers getting automatically qualified for the final and the two best times among the remaining athletes joining them. S-A. Fraser-Price and T. Davis were qualified from the first heat, S. Jackson and M-J. TaLou from the second and J. Alfred and B. Brown from the third. S-C. Richardson had the best time among the remaining athletes, but, then, things got complicated. E. Svoboda and D. Asher-Smith had the next best time, 11.01 s. And when the composition of the final was first announced Asher-Smith was given a place in the final but not Svoboda. My first reaction was: "hell, they are using those pesky milliseconds again". But the problem is that the results on the live-stream were not given in milliseconds and the photo-finish was presented raw without the vertical guidelines used in order to determine the times of the athletes. However, a quarter of an hour later, a new table was presented giving both Svoboda and Asher-Smith a place in the final. I surmised that the polish team had filed a protest and, in view of a complicated situation, the organisers relented and accepted a final with nine athletes, something perfectly feasible in modern stadia. I refuse to think that that was not a case of "millisecond stupidity" but one of pure and simple stupidity, where the organisers did not realise that Svoboda had a right to the final before her team filed a protest.

However, today the official results and official photo-finish snapshots were available and I decided to have a closer look at them. And, lo and behold, a conspiracy theory started forming in my head. In the official results both Svoboda and Asher-Smith are given a time of 11.010 s, i.e. the same time down to millisecond precision. Then, how come the organisers qualified initially only Asher-Smith and not Svoboda? As I said I do not think they are stupid, on the contrary, I am convinced that they know what they are doing. So, I had a look at the official photo-finish snapshots. Here is the one of the first heat. 

There is nothing that can be said about the time of Svoboda: 11.010 s looks most accurate. And now look at the photo-finish of the third heat.

And compare the part of the body of Asher-Smith used in order to determine her time to the one of Brown or Frey. Clearly, the line should have been a trifle to the right, meaning her time could have been 11.009 s (or even 11.008 s). Here is where the conspiracy theory starts. Probably Asher-Smith was initially given a time of 11.009 s and, on the basis of this, she got qualified for the final at Svoboda's expense. But when the polish team protested and (quite justifiably) challenged the accuracy of the photo-finish, a Solomon's solution was deemed preferable and both athletes were granted the same time and qualified for the final. But then the photo-finish had to be doctored in order to support the decision. This is what I think happened and this is why the line determining Asher-Smith's time is slightly to the left.

Conspiracies notwithstanding, as long as the decision on delicate issues will depend on the judgement of the human eye, athletics will be losing credibility. We are seeing what is happening today with race-walking where everybody is running instead of walking. And with sprint level improving by the year, it is clear that there will be more and more "millisecond" issues. It's high time lord Sebastian, during his third and last term as World Athletics president, take a brave decision and do something useful for our sport, starting by replacing 19th century's photos by some 21st century technology.