On August 27, 1960, one of the most controversial gold medals was awarded at the Rome Olympics. In the men’s 100-meter freestyle, Australian swimmer John Devitt and American Lance Larson achieved the same finishing time, 55.2 seconds. Only Devitt won the gold medal.
The swims were timed using three timers per lane, all with stopwatches, from which the average was taken. In the infrequent case of a tie, the head judge, in this case Hans Runströmer of Sweden, was present to decide. Although Larson was technically a tenth of a second faster, Runströmer ruled the times the same and called Devitt the winner.
It was this controversy that led to Omega’s development of touchscreen boards at the ends of swimming lanes in 1968, allowing athletes to time themselves, eliminating the risk of human error.
Alain Zobrist, the boss Omega’s Swiss timekeeping system—Omega’s 400-employee division that handles everything related to measuring, counting and tracking nearly every sport—is full of similar stories.
For example, in 2024, the electronic starting pistol is connected to a loudspeaker behind each athlete because in staggered lane races such as the 400 metres, athletes in the furthest lane would hear the sound of the starting pistol a fraction of time later than those closest to the pistol, putting them at a disadvantage.
Or how, when photomontage was first used in the 1940s, it took almost two hours to make a decision because the film had to be developed first. Now, Omega’s fresh camera Scanning-o-vision can capture up to 40,000 digital images per second, allowing judges to make a decision within minutes.
To split hairs—or rather, seconds—Swiss Timing has long gone beyond just timing races. Although the Omega logo has been on every Olympic timing device since 1932 (apart from when Seiko took a closer look in 1964 and 1992), Swiss Timing does much more than just start and finish times. “We tell the story of the race, not just the result,” Zobrist says. When it comes to Paris 2024, that story has a lot more to it than before.
“2018 was a breakthrough year for us,” says Zobrist. “That’s when we started putting motion sensors on athletes’ clothing, which allowed us to understand the full performance—what happens between start and finish.”