Timing Is Everything

This is a bit geeky, but what it reflects is the fact that modern track & field(athletics if you live anywhere else in the world) is the perfect laboratory for computer timing.  Seiko is the official timing company for the IAAF World Championships and they have posted a diagram of how their system works for the timing of track events HERE.  The field event measurement system is diagrammed HERE. The timing system for the marathon and walk events is HERE.

Timing has come a ways from people standing around with stop watches for the running/walking events or a tape measure for the field events.  Combine this technology with the camera work that the television networks often employ--aerial photos, stationary cameras, cameras on dollies racing alongside the runners on the straightaways mounted on a track, or at some meets, steady cams following the runners around parts of the track being held by their operator who is riding on a golf cart.

There's nowhere to hide during a track meet and a treasure trove of data to be mined by statisticians and sports scientists on the speed that athletes are traveling, their reaction times starting out of the blocks, and the speed and force they are generating as they jump, throw, and vault.  The system can break down races into how fast Usain Bolt runs at top speed, when he reaches that speed, and how long he can hold it.  Or when Mo Farah launches his kick.  How fast he covers the last half, quarter, eighth of a mile.

The allure of athletics is how faster, higher, stronger athletes canperform.  Using all this data gives those doing the analysis the statistics to provide answers to those questions.