Most competitions use individual speakers so everyone hears the same starting blast.
Ingram Publishing (Superstock Limited) / Alamy
Posted on 06/28/2008 6:09:22 PM PDT by neverdem
Pistol may hand advantage to those closest to the starting official.
Most competitions use individual speakers so everyone hears the same starting blast.
Ingram Publishing (Superstock Limited) / Alamy
The Olympics may not be the bastion of pure sporting contest that people might think. Although the pistol used to start sprint events in the Games might make good theatre, it may mean that sprinters in lane 1, nearest the gun, get away from the blocks faster.
Most international athletics competitions use speakers behind each athlete to broadcast the start signal. The Olympics uses this system but also increases the drama of the set-piece by having a starting official, complete with pistol.
But when David Collins and colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, reviewed reaction-time data for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, they saw a marked effect: runners in lane 1 had an average reaction time of 160 milliseconds, whereas those in lane 2 got away in 171 milliseconds. Sprinters in lane 7 (bizarrely the lane with the slowest average reaction time of the eight lanes) took 185 milliseconds to get off the blocks.
Collins also did some experiments of his own, to attempt to see whether the effect is real. He set off trained and untrained sprinters with a range of gun sounds, each with a different intensity. The research is published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 1.
Gunning for it He measured the runners’ reaction time, and the time it took them to reach the maximum force they applied as they pushed off, and also the strength of that force, called peak force. In all cases, average reaction times were faster for louder bangs. The peak force wasn’t affected by the gun, but in untrained athletes, the time it took them to reach peak force was shortened if they heard a loud bang. This was the only difference between the trained and untrained groups, says Collins.
This difference in peak force between trained and untrained runners shows that the trained athletes are performing optimally. “If they can produce more force [when they hear a loud noise], they should be training harder,” points out Matthew Pain, an expert in sports biomechanics at Loughborough University, UK.
Collins also tested whether the loudest bang startled the runners, by watching to see if they blinked. When the runners were startled, their reaction times were faster, but startle had no effect on peak force. Collins suggests that this startle response could help Parkinson’s sufferers who get trapped in ‘freezing’ events, where they’re unable to move.
John Rothwell from University College London, who studies human movement disorders, argues that freezing events are not likely to be affected by a startle. Freezing always happens during walking, and usually when the patient encounters a door or other obstacle, he explains. “Under those circumstances I doubt whether a startle will help a great deal,” Rothwell says.
Out with a bang
During his experiments, Collins also noted that 21% of his participants recorded reaction times faster than 100 milliseconds – the false start threshold adopted by the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF). British sprinter Linford Christie famously fell foul of this rule in 1996, despite claiming that he always set off on "the b of the bang".
The 100-millisecond threshold limit needs to be addressed, says Pain. “If it is possible that a human can move that fast [faster than 100 milliseconds], that should be the limit,” he says.
“I know they can respond faster than 100 milliseconds,” says Collins. "The Olympics committee is aware of the issue." The committee currently has no plans to change the system, however.
Collins will be watching the 100-metre event with extra interest in the Beijing Olympics this summer. And he suggests one way in which the organizers could retain the telegenic drama without handing anyone an unfair edge. “To make it fair they should use a silent gun,” he says.
References Brown, A. M. et al. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 40, 1142-1148 (2008)
Oh, FFS.
WTF?
Not too worry at Beijing, the military will be there with guns everywhere and chances are when they hear the starting gun everyone will open fire at the same time.
What a crock of crap. The person closest might hear the gun 1/60 of a second sooner. And there has never been anything that shows the ones closest to the starter pistol tend to finish higher than the ones further away.
As usual, people with too much free time on their hands.
It has always been recognized that the middle lanes are the best ones for sprinters and hurdlers on a straight track.
On the curve, the innermost lane has always been considered the best tho they are staggered so each person runs the same distance regardless of lane.
Typically the sprinter with the fastest time in the prelims or prior times will be assigned the inner lanes. Not perfectly fair but as close as it can be.
What a load. Lanes 4 and 5 are the “preferred” lanes, when seeding runners for a start. I swear to god that “fairness” will be the death of us all.
I meant the center lanes, not inner lanes for the fastest sprinters.
Indeed, the seeding usually insures that the fastest runners are grouped in the center lanes.
If there is an advantage, it is going to a secondary competitor.
Leni
Now that I think of it I guess we won’t see any deaf individuals competing for track, won’t that be the day they have to use starting lights for a deaf individual, theoretically I wonder if they would have an advantage with lights vs sound.
According to his work, the most measured difference was only 25 milliseconds, or 0.025 seconds. 1/60th of a second is 0.0167 second.
The sound might also be louder, or less muffled to the person closer to the gun.
I think the whole thing sounds silly, but the question is if his data is accurate or not.
/s
How wide is the track? Sound travels at 1129 ft/sec. So, in 0.025 sec sound travels 28 ft. Sounds about right.
If the runner wants to make sure he doesn’t lose this amount of time, he could watch for the pistol blast.
The idea you need speakers is clearly put out by the speaker manufacturer.
Do they explain this anywhere? Or do they just mention it and move on since they can't figure it out?
thank you...
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