This Is Why
There Are So
Many Ties In
Swimming
Olympics 2016, three legends of swimming—Michael
Phelps, Chad Le Clos, and László Cseh—turned in
identical times to share silver in the 100m butterfly.
Last night, Simone Manuel tied for gold with
Canadian Penny Oleksiak in the 100m freestyle.
Modern timing systems are capable of measuring
down to the millionth of a second—so why doesn’t
FINA, the world swimming governing body, increase
its timing precision by adding thousandths-of-
seconds?
As it turns out, FINA used to. In 1972, Sweden’s
Gunnar Larsson beat American Tim McKee in the
400m individual medley by 0.002 seconds. That finish
led the governing body to eliminate timing by a
significant digit. But why?
In a 50 meter Olympic pool, at the current men’s
world record 50m pace, a thousandth-of-a-second
constitutes 2.39 millimeters of travel. FINA pool
dimension regulations allow a tolerance of 3
centimeters in each lane, more than ten times that
For each paragraph write
one sentence that
summarizes the
paragraph or a question it
poses.
Michael Phelps,
Chad Le Clos, land
László Cseh had
the same times
making all three of
them silver medalist
