Thousandths of a second can't be used for official times because the measuring tolerances on the lanes from start to finish aren't that fine.
Finally someone that gets it!! You also have to factor in the positioning of the camera. They do their best to make sure that the camera is positioned on the exact front edge of the finish line, but in reality there is no way to have it positioned perfectly. Combine this with the tolerance for the lane distances and there is no way to assure that the times are accurate to the thousandth when comparing times from one track to another or even times on the same track on different days.
You can use the thousandth of a second to break ties for heats in the same meet on the same day because you are using the same track lanes and the same camera position the entire time. The equipment is accurate enough to measure to the thousandth. But once you move to a different track or set the camera up a different time, you can no longer guarantee that they are accurate to the thousandth of a second.
What's weirder is the rules for the roads. When Ritz ran 59:59.5 or some tenth of a second over 59 seconds, it was turned into 1:00:00. By that standard, Usain Bolt's time would have been 10 flat.
That is not weird at all. The accuracy of measuring a road race is not good enough to guarantee that times measured to a tenth of a second will be accurate from one race to another. Thus round the time up to the next whole second. Then you can compare times from one course to another.
rounded clearly is not the right word. Maybe truncated to 2 decimal places but no faster than actual time? So 9.570 is reported to be 9.57, but as pointed out 9.571is reported to be 9.58
Doesn't help that announcers will say when reporting winning sprints times that so and so's time "has now been rounded down" like in the case of Bolt who's winning time in the 200m at Berlin was 19.20, then was "rounded down" to 19.19.
Its for the same reason we don't round up jumps and throws. a 26' 11.5" jump is NOT a 27 foot jump. A 9.572 100m is NOT a 9.570 100m.
Track and field wants an at least measure. They don't round jumps and throws up because the competitor didn't reach at least that distance, whereas they do round up or adjust times because by doing so they insure that the athlete did at least as good as that mark and no worse. Usain Bolt did not complete 100m in 9.57s, but he did complete it by the 9.58 mark, so he gets credit for that. As for rounding up road distances, it would depend on the margin of error at any particular distance as to whether that was reasonable. I'd think it would actually be more than 1 second for the half marathon, and they apply the same rule of rounding the second up at all the road distances, even though the time error would be greater for course measuring tolerance as you go up to marathon.
Your reading comprehension is not good. He clearly wrote "from venue to venue or from day to day" NOT for runners in the same race.
What? It's a timer. Swimming timers can capture to the thousandth from venue to venue and from day to day
And if they have documented proof of a 9.579 by Tebogo (if he does it) and they call it 9.579, then they need to recognize Bolt's 9.572 as the WR if they have documented proof of an actual 9.572
Similarly, if Tebogo goes 9.571, the WR should only be Tebogo's
Thousandths of a second can't be used for official times because the measuring tolerances on the lanes from start to finish aren't that fine.
Are you saying we can’t measure 100m below a tolerance of +/- 1 cm? And even a budget high speed camera can capture 1000 fps. I’ll accept that setting up the camera may be difficult, but start/finish tolerances and camera technology certainly are not limiting factors in measuring to the thousandth.
Thousandths of a second can't be used for official times because the measuring tolerances on the lanes from start to finish aren't that fine.
Are you saying we can’t measure 100m below a tolerance of +/- 1 cm? And even a budget high speed camera can capture 1000 fps. I’ll accept that setting up the camera may be difficult, but start/finish tolerances and camera technology certainly are not limiting factors in measuring to the thousandth.
This.. and Omega touts their timers that have been timing to the thousandths since 1948.