Did Michael Phelps win medal 7?

[NoZed Avenger]

Is this the right thread to point out that I wrote all of Shakespeare's plays, and that my wife wrote all his sonnets?

 

[dudalb]

Is this the right thread to point out that I wrote all of Shakespeare's plays, and that my wife wrote all his sonnets?

Boy, you've got nerve.
Trying to take credit for what Francis Bacon wrote......

 

[fullflavormenthol]

People look for anything to find a conspiracy in, and it is very telling that it is the same old anti-capitalist (America is bad because we don't fully rely on tax payer money to fund our atheletes) crap that you find in many other conspiracies.

What people in the audiences or on the sidelines thought doesn't matter. A technical system was developed to remove the human element as much as possible from judging. Secondly, when watching the frame by frame (from multiple views...) I can still see how Phelps won.

Personal observation...Cavic made two fatal errors in that race. 1.) He was slower on the turn than Phelps, which allowed Phelps to catch him. 2.) He tried to glide in while Phelps did a half stroke at the very end which allowed him to touch the sensor pad first. On the replay you can clearly see that Phelps had a momentium of his arms that was obviously going faster than Cevic could glide into the sensor pad.

Truth is that Phelps won fair and square, although it was a really, really, really, really, tight victory. (rule 10) happens in races. I have seen track. horse, and other races that are so close at to not be known until they look at replays.

What is it with people to automatically go to the conspiracy realm when any race (presidential included) isn't a clear blow out? My opinion is that this douche was wanting to be different and root against Phelps because people were behind him to win, and got mad when a record was broken. Hell...the USA had an all around great swim team this Olympics.

Oh, and loosing to someone in the qualifying matches doesn't really mean anything. Qualifying is often a game of doing just enough to get in, but not too much to detract from your game time performance.

Just my two cents.

 

[zooterkin]

The problem with this is of course that electronics can fail, but more importantly, a pressure sensitive pad will only be activated by sufficient pressure.

As mentioned above, this doesn't apply in this case (since the secondary, photographic, timing system backs up the result), but it is a good general point. I heard someone from the official timekeepers, Omega, talking after the race, and he was saying that the distance of the event includes the few millimetres that the swimmer has to move the touchpad by to register that they have finished the race.

 

[Mongrel]

Sounds like sour grapes to me. The author of the website should show the next couple frames in that photo montage.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0808/oly.phelps.sequence/content.5.html

The Serbians themselves conceded after reviewing the tape.
I also looked at his link, there is nothing that says both hands have to touch "the pad" simultaneously.

That's a helluva picture though, I can see Phelps' fingers bending from applying the pressure while Cavics *may* be touching but exerting little pressure, the next picture has a close up and shows the (albeit small) gap - like fullflavormenthol says (rule 10) happens, he was very unlucky there

 

[Myriad]

At the approximate mean speeds in this event, .01 seconds represents two centimeters difference in position -- hardly a microscopic difference, given the timekeeping and photographic equipment in use today.

On the other hand, .01 seconds is only about a third of the time it would take a sound (such as the starting signal) to travel from lane 1 to lane 8, so I can only hope there's a separate speaker adjacent to each starting platform (or some other appropriate arrangement putting the platforms equidistant from their closest sound source) to ensure fair starting conditions.

(Also, all we really know from the reported .01 second difference in time is that the hundredths digit of the clock ticked over sometime between the times the two racers' touch registered on their respective pads. The actual difference in time could be as small as one clock pulse, or could be as great as one clock pulse less than .02 seconds. Those possible cases in which the true difference in time was closest to .01 seconds are the most probable, but we can't be sure. The system must internally determine the time with much greater precision, but that information isn't revealed, probably to avoid racers who match the world record to .01 seconds, insisting they should be recognized as the new world record holder due to being faster in the thousandths digit.)

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[jhunter1163]

At the approximate mean speeds in this event, .01 seconds represents two centimeters difference in position -- hardly a microscopic difference, given the timekeeping and photographic equipment in use today.

On the other hand, .01 seconds is only about a third of the time it would take a sound (such as the starting signal) to travel from lane 1 to lane 8, so I can only hope there's a separate speaker adjacent to each starting platform (or some other appropriate arrangement putting the platforms equidistant from their closest sound source) to ensure fair starting conditions.

(Also, all we really know from the reported .01 second difference in time is that the hundredths digit of the clock ticked over sometime between the times the two racers' touch registered on their respective pads. The actual difference in time could be as small as one clock pulse, or could be as great as one clock pulse less than .02 seconds. Those possible cases in which the true difference in time was closest to .01 seconds are the most probable, but we can't be sure. The system must internally determine the time with much greater precision, but that information isn't revealed, probably to avoid racers who match the world record to .01 seconds, insisting they should be recognized as the new world record holder due to being faster in the thousandths digit.)

Respectfully,
Myriad

The systems do actually time to the thousandths of seconds, but the thousandths digits is not used because at that level of accuracy even tiny irregularities in the wall of the pool come into play. If .01 second = 2 cm, then .001 second = 2 mm.

 

[alfaniner]

Each starting block has a horn underneath it to directly address the problem of sound waves carrying, so each swimmer hears the horn at the same time. I believe you will see the same in the running events now.

 

[Elizabeth I]

i'm Surprised No-one Has Claimed Phelps Swam At "near Freestyle Speed".

rofl

 

[volatile]

That's a helluva picture though, I can see Phelps' fingers bending from applying the pressure while Cavics *may* be touching but exerting little pressure, the next picture has a close up and shows the (albeit small) gap - like fullflavormenthol says (rule 10) happens, he was very unlucky there

Yup - frame 5 in the link Gumboot posted is all-but-conclusive. Phelps won. It's astonishing that he did given how far he was from the wall in Frame 4, but there ya go.