From John Chapman
North Perth, Western Australia
Now that the dust has settled from the Olympics, I am wondering whether the
pursuit of accuracy has gone too far. I note particularly the swimming event in
which the times were measured to 0.001 of a second. A simple computation shows
that this time corresponds to about 2 millimetres for a fast swimmer.
I wonder whether the starting blocks are positioned to this accuracy? But
more importantly, the length of each lane between touch pads would have to be
accurate to 1 millimetre for a 100-metre race. Such precision in the
construction industry is hard to imagine. For a 500-metre race, a variation of 2
millimetres between two lanes results in a discrepancy of 0.01 of a second. So
how relevant is that third decimal place?
My advice to swimmers is to grow those fingernails. If judges are appealing
to the last digit to separate two swimmers, the nails could make the difference
between gold and silver.
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